A labyrinth is a maze. And a maze is a labyrinth. All six of my everyday dictionaries say so. The lead question on today’s pop quiz is: What considerations should prompt a discriminating writer to choose one noun instead of its synonymous twin?

One evasive answer is that, like humans, no nouns, adjectives or verbs – at least the ones we’re talking about – are truly synonymous. Kissing cousins, perhaps; twins, no. In addition to a labyrinth or maze, we may plausibly lose a character in a metaphorical jungle, wilderness, web, tangle, puzzle, quandary, picklement, muddle or scrape.

What an embarrassment of riches! What a cornucopia! Every serious writer, consciously or unconsciously, will weigh such choices on a different scale. Ordinarily we begin with this elementary proposition: We want to be understood. Otherwise, why write at all? Why not engage in omphaloskepsis instead? You could look it up.

We should be clear. But how clear? Is our aim to be perfectly clear, reasonably clear, mostly clear, or clear only to etymologists? The question cannot be satisfactorily answered without addressing a preliminary question: For whom are we writing? We will employ one vocabulary for Good Housekeeping, quite another for The New Yorker. There is nothing hypocritical or duplicitous in making such a conscious estimate.

We must visualize our hypothetical readers, their age, education, probable interests: Are they likely to be familiar with Daedalus, Icarus, King Minos of Crete and the captive Minotaur? If so, then we might well choose to write of a political labyrinth. The unexpected allusion could add that soupcon of flavor that promotes potato soup to vichyssoise.

We’re talking about words, their penumbras, their connotations, the associations they evoke. An enigma, a puzzle, a problem and a riddle all have something in common, but the nouns are not fungible. Suppose a conundrum is really a riddle?

One other consideration: If we assume, (1) that there is no substantive or semantic difference between a “labyrinth” and a “maze,” and (2) that the nouns are equally well understood, we turn to other elements that figure in the writer’s art. How do the words sound?

I’ve said it a hundred times: We read consciously with our eyes, subconsciously with our ears. With “maze,” we get one syllable and a long “a.” In this hypothetical piece we’re writing, could anything usefully be done by working in such verbs as faze, graze and praise? Daddy Daedalus entered that maze in a haze. How do I love thee? Let me count the waze. Well, maybe not. With “labyrinth,” a writer has only three syllables and a lisp. One does not hear the sirens’ song. One hears the family dentist as he ends his oral ministry: Now rinth your mouth.

We must play with words. Tease them. Love them. Early in the playoffs, were the Yankees routed, trounced, drubbed, whipped, licked, crushed, overpowered or overwhelmed? They were narrowly “eliminated,” but what writer would choose that pallid verb?

Was Einstein a famous, renowned, celebrated, notable, prominent, acclaimed, eminent, legendary figure, or just a big-time dude? Your readers, your choice.

James Kilpatrick is a syndicated columnist.