I can't see the rules mention anything about information from the team to the spymaster, so in general, it's not forbidden for the spymaster to listen to their team.
The examples you give seem to be within the rules in the sense that apples and basses are edible, so the clue would be "about the meaning of the word". Then again, one could argue that after such a meta-clue is given, the clue would no longer be about the meaning of the words, but about the meta-clue.
In the end, it's something you need to argue within your group. If that came up in a game I was playing, I'd tell people to stop trying to break the game, and would stop playing with them if that didn't work.
Note that in the general case, you'd have to come up with quite a large number of possible clues to suggest clues about all the possible combinations. (There are ten even in this small example.) You'd need to come up with ways to combine words that don't need to be combined, along with the ones that do. At the same time, the spymaster can concentrate on the actual problem, so are you even sure that would help?
If you just give hints about the obvious combinations, they've probably figured them out already, and if you're really capable of coming up with ten clues in the time it takes them to come up with one, well, either wait for your turn to be spymaster, or find smarter friends to play with.