I recommend that you start with iPhone Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide. This walks you through the basics of Objective-C and gets you started writing apps quickly. It doesn’t cover everything under the sun, but once you get going you can make use of the on-line documentation and, of course, stackoverflow.

All you will need is to download the latest version of XCode from Apple. This is free, but to put any apps you build onto a device, you will need to register as a developer and pay Apple $99/year. There is a lot you can do with just the simulator (included with XCode), so I’d recommend just starting there and seeing how it goes.

If you get stuck, just search around on stackoverflow for help or post a question.

Good luck!

Thank you in advance for you time
Jay

I’m looking forward to the upcoming “look this word up feature”. I won’t mention the solution you chose to use in case you wish to keep that choice hidden from public view. For other developer’s, Princeton’s REST interface is trivial to implement (assuming programmatic scraping doesn’t violate allowed usage):
E.g.:
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=ido

I like the stats tracking ideas mentioned previously. In the same spirit, you might consider implementing a multi-player leader-board. Perhaps there are already free or cheap web services which can help here as you would need to centralize the scores for synchronization. The ability to invite others to play and compete against a player’s score would be a valuable addition and as it would most certainly help to increase your market share since like many other apps, $1 isn’t going to break anyone’s bank. Imagine “Sami has challenged you to a round of CODE WORD. Are you up to the challenge?”. You could allow the sender to pre-pay for the app.

~Rob

I’ve added stats tracking for each word length that tracks the number of games played, the number of codes cracked and the percentage of times you crack the code. Just for fun, it also tracks your best and worst scores along with the average for all the games you win.

Since hints are helpful, they cost you guesses. The algorithm for determining how much was a little tricky, but we did a statistical analysis of our dictionaries and came up with a pretty fair scheme. You’ll have to let us know what you think of it. Each time you ask for a hint, you’ll be notified of how much that next letter will cost you. The guess tracker (little number on the left of the guess fields) is synchronized with the hints penalty count so you can monitor your score as you go.

To address the ‘quitting’ problem, I’ve also archived the game state for each word length, so you won’t lose games or mess up your stats when you quit the app. Whenever you start a new game before the old one is finished, you’ll get a warning to let you know.

Finally, I’ve also added the option to reset all stats or just the stats for a particular word length. Each time you reset, you’ll be prompted to make sure you really want to clear out your game history.

The new version of CODE WORD has just been uploaded to the App Store. Given the holiday shutdown from Dec 23-29, it may take a bit of time for the update to hit the store, but look out for it in the New Year.

Thanks again for the great suggestions. I hope you like the way I’ve handled the issues you raised. Please me let me know if there are any other features you’d like to see in the future.

When you start any sort of stat tracking, one thing you’re going to have to deal with is quitting mid-game. What happens when I’m in a game and then start a game? Are you going to deal with all the “Are you sure you want to restart?” warnings?

Last point: one of the descriptions I saw on the pengoneapps site described it as similar to Mastermind. Did you check to see whether Mastermind is still trademarked? You’re certainly allowed to mention crosswords, but careful about mentioning currently-sold IP.
-Sam