Thwartful

“Poor little shard of a Brogie; and Stu,” searched I in the thwartful modulation, [...]

And, doing third edits for Lindsay notwithstanding, The Paper was a thwartful place for a would-be writer like myself to work in.

In this joke the use of the container is secondary, functioning primarily to create a more thwartable (thwartful?) expectation.

Josh viewed Jerome Benedict as a thwartful man always finding the flaws in other people's research.

And Vereker feels thwartful. . . . It's due to his having a boil—and no cushion with him. . . .