QUICK CROSSWORD

Horton, who was a Protestant clergyman, said, “Good ideas are a dime a dozen; bad ones are free.” In life, maybe; at the bridge table, anyone with good ideas will win dozens of events.

In today’s deal, South is in six hearts. What line of play would be a good idea after West leads the spade queen to dummy’s ace?

In the auction, two spades was fourth- suit game- forcing. Then South, after two doses of Blackwood, signed off in six hearts. Even though South knew that his side had a nine- card club fit, he wisely went with his own excellent suit.

South could see 11 winners: two spades, six hearts, two diamonds and one club. His first idea was to hope that he could play clubs for the loss of only one trick, finding the suit 2- 2 or West with a singleton royal. But he had a second, better idea: establish a third diamond trick if the missing cards were splitting 4- 3. To do that, declarer had to ruff two diamonds in his hand and required three dummy entries: two for the ruffs and the last to reach the 13th diamond. Where were those entries?

South played a diamond to his king, overtook his heart eight with dummy's 10 ( entry one), cashed the diamond ace ( discarding a club) and ruffed a diamond.

If a defender had discarded, declarer would have hoped that clubs cooperated. Here, though, East and West followed suit. So, South ruffed the spade king ( entry two), ruffed another diamond, drew trumps, crossed to the club ace ( entry three) and cashed the diamond six. Copyright United Feature Syndicate ( Asia Features)