1) Many solvers simply work with the puzzle graphic itself, opening it in Paint or whatever and writing on it and/or using a fill function to shade things in. They then simply attach their result to their email to me.
2) All words in a dictionary are defined with other words (talk about a self-referential mindscrew); analogies happen to be rather efficient at it for some terms, especially when they're simple variants of common words. Besides, it gives me plausible deniability if someone doesn't look the word up and misinterprets what I say, or something. - ZM