Yankee attracted to Spike in time (4)
I believe the answer is:
year
'time' is the definition.
(I know that time can be written as year)
'yankee attracted to spike' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'yankee' could be 'y' (phonetic alphabet: alpha, bravo, charlie etc.) and 'y' is present in the answer.
'spike' could be 'ear' (spike is another term for an ear of grain) and 'ear' is present in the answer.
No letters remain.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
'in' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for year that I've seen before include "One intake of undergrads" , "Orbital period" , "1961?" , "Manage" , "Time taken by a planet to orbit the sun" .)