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How exact does clueing need to be

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zinaphile:
For thematic reasons I'd like to use a particular two word idiom to clue a different two word idiom. The meanings of the two are very similar but perhaps not identical - I would use them interchangeably but online reference works suggest some differences in connotation. Because this is integrated into the theme I need to make sure it's kosher up front - there's no wiggle room for an editor to modify it later. So how exact do the two need to be? And what references would you suggest I use to verify this?  The free online references I use tend to be a bit sparse in their coverage of idioms.

mmcbs:
This is a little too vague to answer with any confidences. But, the general rule in cluing is if you can substitute the clue for the entry in a sentence and still have the same meaning, it's OK.

zinaphile:
Xwordinfo has a page where Shortz goes through his editorial decisions for a specific puzzle. For a few clues he says things like "not exact enough" or "not on target enough". Note the "enough" which suggests the match needn't be exact, just close. But how close? I know, hard to quantify - as you rightly said my question was a little vague. Thesaurus.com gives a color-coded indication of how close 2 synonyms are, but I find it to be inconsistent which lowers my confidence in it. There are a number of user-sourced thesauri but they similarly don't inspire confidence that they're authoritative. So I guess I'm looking for suggestions for an online thesaurus that's authoritative, especially one that indicates how close a match the synonyms are.   

mmcbs:
I'm afraid there is no authoritative thesaurus that would have that information. This is simply because there is no official arbiter of the English language, only dictionaries and thesauri that record what they believe to be definitions and synonyms based on usage.

The editors take many factors into account to determine if a clue is appropriate. These include 1) the difficulty level they're shooting for in the puzzle; 2) the surrounding entries/clues; 3) recency of usage (if they just used an answer/clue combination in yesterday's puzzle, they wouldn't want to use it again); 4) number of characters in the clue (a concern for print publishers); 5) whether or not they like your clue; and many others. You can be sure if an editor thinks of a clue that they deem to be more clever than yours, they'll change it in a heartbeat.

When I first started creating puzzles, I would track the changes that editors make to my clues. My conclusion was that it was impossible to anticipate what an editor might change, so I just wrote the clues they way I thought they ought to be, and hundreds of puzzles later editors are still changing my clues, and none of them has ever told me they didn't care for my cluing skills.

zinaphile:
Interesting. Thanks for the input.

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