Words used in forms
by Qaqaq
Forms are most popular when they consist mainly of common words and phrases.
Often, though—particularly in larger forms—the form constructor (or “formist”)
might need to resort to unusual words to finish the form. Form words may come
not only from the standard NPL references but from any English-language source.
Solvers may get credit for incompletely solved forms containing words not found in
any standard NPL reference and not easily inferable from context. (While formists
are allowed to use these words, form solvers are not always required to find them.)
Historically, formists were not allowed to use abbreviations, partial phrases (for
example, ETAT clued as “Coup d’_”), or foreign words. In recent years, Enigma
forms have contained all of these. Some people (myself included) do not consider
forms containing these sorts of entries to be legitimate; others, seeing forms as
similar to crosswords, have no problem with them. Formists must decide this
question for themselves.
Prohibited words include all those listed in NI2 only as “reformed spelling”. The
reformed spelling movement was a brief, unpopular phenomenon, and while the
NI2 editor was trying to popularize those spellings by including them, they never
gained wide acceptance. For this reason, formists have never felt free to use those
spellings, and they are banned from all types of Enigma puzzles.
[This article originally appeared in the PDF of the Guide to The Enigma]