Enigma is an implementation of Black Box, a game for which Waddington hold the copyright.

However, there may be no serious objection to this version, for two reasons: Firstly, it was found necessary to use the Waddington equipment in order to play the game sensibly, and it was noted that there was an error in the way the rules were worked.

The idea is that a number of objects are concealed within an 8 x 8 matrix, and their positions are found by shooting tracers into the matrix at various points.

The objects may deflect, reflect or absorb the tracers, sending them out of the matrix at unexpected points or not sending them out at all.

The original game allowed up to five objects. Enigma allows eight, which is too many for accurate deductions to be made. A tracer might bounce around inside the matrix forever, given a particular configuration.

The biggest fault, however, was that the results of each trial with a tracer were lost, and had to be jotted down on paper or set up on the Black Box board.

The latter was made more difficult because the numbering of the box and the screen display was difficult.

D.T.