Yeah, this seems to work quite often, depending on the situation. It's good because a lot of the time the person or people in the conversation can't even notice you deliberately aimed for a substitute word, they might just think you just chose to go with that word and nothing else. Though, say you have to say a certain video game's, books's or a person's exact name: these are harder, often impossible to get by with synonyms. I hate it when I can't figure a substitute word for these situations and may just have to be quiet because I'm afraid of the "word block" happening.