That's an interesting system, and one that I haven't seen before. I suppose the advantage (in addition to minimizing spoilers) is that it makes the player do a certain amount of work to get a hint, which discourages doing so lightly.
Of course, it also requires a lot of work on the part of the author. In my case, I anticipate having a few dozen different help topics, some of which have as many as 10 separate hints. The idea of having to set up a numerical cipher for each word is pretty scary. On the other hand, the game is basically a spy story parody -- so the idea of having to use the equivalent of a "secret decoder ring" to decode the top-secret information could be done in such a way that it plays into the story. I probably will be too lazy to use this approach, but its worth thinking about.
You might be able to find someone who likes this kind of activity to collaborate with you on coming up with something similar to Leadlight’s system or some other low-tech-but-spy-feeling kind of hint system. Another fairly easy thing you could do is just encode the clues in ROT13 (see http://www.rot13.com/ for a simple interface for doing the encyphering/decyphering).
Actually, something like that kind of low-tech substituion cypher has its appeal; it reduces the likelihood of inadvertant spoilers while not being quite as labor-intensive to produce as a word-based code, and also requires some work on the part of the player if he’s going to be too lazy to solve the puzzles on his own. The “secret decoder ring” could be provided in the form of a “secret decoder chart” in the booklet itself.
Then again, I might just use a “high-security information concealment device” – the last (blank) page of the booklet, which the player is instructed to remove and use to cover each page in turn, sliding it down the page so as to reveal the secret information one hint at a time. That’s almost goofy enough to fit in with the spirit of the game.
In Treasures of a Slaver’s Kingdom, I opted for the “CryptoClues” approach for exactly that reason. Originally I was going to do in-game hints of the usual “Solid Gold” variety (and the Glulx version does have that), but decided that a simple cypher would add a nice little gentle, physical step that would keep things easy and move the hints to the PDF where they wouldn’t suck up game-file space … The CryptoClues aren’t a real cryptogram; just a simple one-letter-off cypher that can easily be “decoded” without referring to anything. This keeps it super-easy but with just a touch of effort involved (and of course, I double-spaced the type to make it easy to doodle the solution right on the printout).
(and the labor on my part was almost nil, because while the text looks “enciphered” in the PDF, it really isn’t at all … [low chuckle]) …
Wade here. I believe the creator of that style of hint sheet was Scott Adams. My first encounter with it was in a copy of Australian Apple Review when I was a kid in the 80s, where they included a sheet like that pertaining to Voodoo Castle. Later (muuuuch later!.. like 25+ years) I found that Adams had sheets like that for all his games.
If you’re obsessed with Word, you could create it in Word and then do a save-as to make it HTML. It might have a little more code than necessary, but it wouldn’t be awful.
Barring that, I’m sure there’s a gibbon or two on the forum that might volunteer to format an HTML document for you.
The “secret decoder ring” could be provided in the form of a “secret decoder chart” in the booklet itself.