AZ_IPA said:
The rest of the categories are pretty specific. It's not a perfect system, but it works for what it is intended to do.
You definitely forgot about 16E.
But some styles definitely allow for a bit more range than others. 18E (Belgian Dark Strong), for instance. To a certain extent, you can get a sense of how permissive a certain category/style is just by reading the actual guidelines and even familiarizing oneself with the breadth present among the archetypal commercial examples.
On the other hand, it can sometimes be misleading, seeming permissive (in one or more dimensions) in theory, but being far from it in practice, and that's where there's really no substitute for experience, especially since what happens to be the case "in practice" can vary from competition to competition, region to region, and even judge to judge. For example, the guidelines give you a sense that 16C (Saison) is a style that allows the brewer a very large degree of freedom, and technically it does, but a lot of judges associate the style with just one commercial example - Saison Dupont - and often go so far as to actually penalize brewers for diverging from that,
*even if it happens to be entirely within the actual guidelines*.
Long story short, it's a complicated question with no real easy answer. I just barely even started to scratch the surface with this post. A brewer that's new to competition would do best to start off by rigidly adhering to guidelines and even major commercial examples. Once one is comfortable with competition and has a good feel for everything, then they can start getting a bit more creative, even "cheating" a bit (VERY subtly, so as not to appear to actually be outside the guidelines) to really bring their scores to the next level.