Time lost in a crooked deal with a Yankee (5)
I believe the answer is:
delay
'time lost in' is the definition.
'delay' can be an answer for 'time' (thesaurus). I am not sure about the 'lost in' bit.
'a crooked deal with a yankee' is the wordplay.
'a crooked' indicates an anagram (a crooked or disrupted version of the letters).
'with' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'a yankee' becomes 'y' (phonetic alphabet: alpha, bravo, charlie etc.).
'deal' with letters rearranged gives 'dela'.
'dela'+'y'='DELAY'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for delay that I've seen before include "Time lapse" , "Put off until later" , "Stoppage" , "Hinder" , "Put off; pause" .)