Player knocking the block off an American one (6)
I believe the answer is:
lutist
'player' is the definition.
(I know that lutist is a type of player)
'knocking the block off an american one' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'the' could be 't' (the is pronounced as a 't' sound in some dialects) and 't' is found within the answer.
'an' could be 'i' (Roman numeral for one) and 'i' is present in the answer.
'american' could be 'us' (United States) and 'us' is present in the remaining letters.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for lutist that I've seen before include "musician" , "string player" .)