Hi aristo,
I have no problem with you questioning my clue, in fact, I’m glad you did because I toyed with the definition working for quite some time.
Firstly I will explain the clue:
Not getting in for the last matinee, being all dressed up and nowhere to go (9)
Not getting in [-in] [anag of] last matinee[-in] being all dressed up-[Anagram indicator] nowhere to go [Def]
The crux of the clue lies with – Does ‘nowhere to go’ match with (or can be synonymous with) ‘Stalemate’
At first, I thought that with the already used ‘Snooker’ – then ‘nowhere to go’ would match this sufficiently. However, like you aristo, this still didn’t quite cut the mustard so I decided to look in my Roget’s thesaurus to see if I could find enough synonyms to back up and warrant my use of ‘nowhere to go’ for ‘Stalemate’
Under main index heading:- draw, stop, inaction, obstacle, parry, noncompletion.
Under sub heading ‘Obstacle’ – bottleneck, blockage, roadblock, traffic jam, / impasse, deadlock, catch 22, cul-de-sac, dead end.
Under sub heading ‘Inaction’:- inertia, impotence, abstinence from action, abstention, deadlock, immobility, paralysis, impassivity.
Do you agree that some of the above words could be fitting with the phrase ‘nowhere to go’ in the sense that one has no way to go or a situation of impassivity.
Also, I do agree that I should have (and it would have read more smoothly) used ‘WITH’ instead of ‘AND’ in the fourth from last word, the reason I didn’t is purely colloquial.
Up here in the North-west of England, people tend to say it with ‘And’ and not ‘With’. Maybe could change it, but too late now.
I used the word ‘being’ to help the anagram indication flow with more fluidity because ‘last matinee is being all dressed up’ sounded better to me at the time
Hope this is a reasonable and acceptable explanation. Thanks, Les40