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Thanks, les!

Thanks for your opinion, les. If anybody else comments I'll certainly take it on board.

I don't see where the homophone is, rambler, unless you mean eager/eager- but those are variant spellings of the same word. I guess I don't think it's quite fair to use a synonym for a word that's a synonym for the answer when the synonym in the clue isn't a synonym for the answer itself. (I know- very messy, but when you try to streamline it it's even more confusing, and that's basically the point.) It's indeed rather like the ghost anagram, which usually uses a synonym as fodder. When you know what the answer is you can see it, but when you don't you might find that finding it is impossible.

O heck, I'm sorry - it's very good of you to take the time to answer.
I had forgotten the 'eager' spelling and assumed the word was 'eagre' so I was using keen/eager as synonyms and using 'say'as homophone indicator to get 'eagre' as def.
I hope that explains my original post - I'm sorry I asked!

I meant eager/eagre, of course. Why are you sorry you asked? Don't you like convoluted answers?

No, aristo, I meant that I was sorry to ask what turned out to be a daft question because I missed the 'eager' spelling.

It's still worth asking about because of the "ghost synonym" thing.

OK, aristo, keen/eager are synonyms, eager/eagre are homophones - I don't see any ghosts, it's just double wordplay. If eagre were the only spelling is the clue OK, which was my original question what seems like a long time ago. I think it's too convoluted and I won't try doing it again.

My point was that using a synonym (B) for a word (C) that's a synonym for the answer (A) when B isn't a synonym for A makes it a ghost synonym.

I haven't done that, aristo. I can't explain the construction any clearer than I did in post #12 so I'll have to give up - thanks very much for the discussion.