Working Through the Political Nomination Informally Crossword Clue
I ran into this one recently in a Saturday afternoon puzzle and had to pull up a reference tool because my initial instinct was off. The clue "Political Nomination Informally" sits somewhere between straightforward vocabulary and the kind of crossword shorthand that makes you second-guess yourself. The answer most solvers land on is ACE — as in, someone who has been "aced" for a position, meaning they've got the nomination secured in insider language. The word "informally" in crossword clues is your signal that the answer isn't the textbook term. You wouldn't write "ACE" in a formal document describing a party nomination. But in casual political conversation — "She's the ace for the seat" — it works. The clue plays on that register shift. Beginners often overshoot and put in SPOT or PET, which are related concepts but miss the specific informal synonym the setter wanted. Here's the practical issue I hit: crosswords vary by publication. A New York Times puzzle might expect ACE, but a smaller regional paper could be going for a different answer like FOCUS or even SHADE, depending on crossing letters. I learned this the hard way when I confidently filled in ACE only to have two crossings contradict it. The fix was flipping to a crossword solver tool, entering the known letters from the intersecting words, and checking what the consensus answer was across multiple puzzle databases.
The most useful workflow I've found for these kinds of register-shift clues is to first treat the informal tag as the main hint rather than filler. It's not decoration — it's directing you away from the literal definition. When you see "informally," "slang," "colloquially," or "kids say," skip the dictionary meaning entirely and think about how people actually talk. That habit alone cuts solving time on medium-hard clues from about four minutes down to under a minute. Another counter-intuitive thing: sometimes the clue is a double definition. "Political Nomination Informally" could technically be parsed as two separate definitions for the same answer — "political" pointing to one meaning and "nomination informally" pointing to another. In this case both halves do point toward ACE, but setters occasionally use this structure with answers that aren't obvious at first glance. If your fill feels forced even after accounting for the informal tag, check whether the clue might be split this way. I also keep a running list of answers I've seen in this category. ACE shows up fairly often. Other candidates that appear with similar clues include IN (as in "she's the in choice"), HOT, and occasionally NAME as in "name recognition" tied to securing a nomination. None of these are interchangeable — each depends entirely on the crossing letters and the puzzle's difficulty tier. A Sunday mega will rarely use a three-letter answer for a five-clue slot, for instance.
If you want a reliable tool for verifying answers when you're stuck, the main crossword solver sites like Crossword Tracker or OneLook let you search by pattern and clue text simultaneously. They pull from published puzzle databases, so the results reflect what solvers have actually seen before. That's different from generic word finders, which will give you every possible synonym and leave you to guess which one fits.
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