Good points. I think clue 3 is weird because what is a "pay one"? You can't take a "pay one", but I get how to read it now---it's like an anaphor for the word. But yes, for consistency a blank space would have worked: [taking a pay ____ is a bummer]

I think my confusion with clue 2 was that I had never heard of the idiom "[to] fish or cut bait" [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_or_cut_bait