A pawn in the mating game in The Queen, for instance (8)
I believe the answer is:
chessman
'a pawn' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'mating game in the queen for instance' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'game' could be 'chess' (I've seen this before) and 'chess' is located in the answer.
The remaining letters 'man' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't understand.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
'in the' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for chessman that I've seen before include "Eg, bishop or rook" , "queen, perhaps" , "Eg, bishop, knight" , "that's played on board" , "Playing piece" .)