Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon wouldn’t let me bind Ctrl-Alt-w as a custom keyboard shortcut. It kept opening up the search in the settings window.
Here’s how I got around it.
Open up the Keyboard option from Mint’s Settings.
Add a new custom shortcut, as you would normally, and assign it the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Alt-y (instead of w). Close the window.
Install bless from apt (it’s a hex editor):
sudo apt-get install bless
Head over to the terminal, and type:
cd ~/.config/dconf cp user user.backup bless user
This’ll open up Cinnamon’s (binary) config file in the hex editor. Hit Ctrl-f to do a search, and search for <Alt>y. Change the dropdown which reads Hexadecimal to Text (important!) and hit Find Next. Like so:
Click on the “y” and change it to a “w”.
Save (Ctrl-s), logout and log back in.
That should do it.