Stymie

Mary, will you be mine? Shall we go round together? Will you fix up a match with me on the links of life which shall end only when the Grim Reaper lays us both a stymie?

They had lost the key, and the lock stymied the first three locksmiths they called.

If writing dates has you stymied at times, it is probably for one of two reasons. https://www.grammarly.com/blog/how-to-write-dates/

It constrained governments, businesses and labour unions to collaborate in planning increased rates of output and the conditions likely to facilitate them. And above all, it blocked any return to the temptations that had so stymied the inter-war economy: under-production, mutually destructive protectionism, and a collapse of trade.

I was making such a drama in my head it was stymieing me.

In populations that have “burst” and “path” structures, for example, individuals can never occupy positions in the graph that their ancestors held. Those structures stymie evolution by denying advantageous mutations any chance to take over a population.

For all his faults and grandstanding, however, Prescott genuinely cared - and his ambitious plans for tram schemes and railway extensions were stymied by lack of support from Downing Street.

Since Israel’s ground war began in Gaza over a year and a half ago, it has followed a consistent pattern of raiding key militant strongholds and then withdrawing forces, alongside periodic stymieing of food aid.