BRIDGE PUZZLE

LESSON FROM DAD

Neither vulnerable. North deals. Opening lead: Jack of ♣

East-west had an opening lead agreement that the lead of the jack denied a higher honor in that suit. Knowing that the king of clubs couldn’t possibly be onside, South rose with dummy’s ace at trick one and “great was the fall thereon,” as the late Edgar Kaplan used to say. That was a good start, but declarer was still nowhere near the nine tricks that he needed.

South led dummy’s queen of hearts, which East captured with the ace. A heart continuation would have been best, but it would have defied a tip from our dad: “In no trump, if both sides play the same suit, one of them is wrong.” East made the reasonable shift to a low spade. West took South’s queen with his ace and continued the suit to dummy’s king.

The heart king was still in his hand as an entry to the diamonds, so South played the ace, king, and another diamond, hoping that he wouldn’t be buried under a deluge of defensive tricks. West won the queen of diamonds, and with no spade to play, led the 10 of hearts. Declarer happily grabbed this with his king and cashed two diamond tricks, discarding two spades from dummy.

West’s original distribution was known at this point, so South led his remaining club and elegantly played low from dummy when West played the nine. South won the last two tricks with dummy’s queen-eight of clubs to bring home a remarkable three no trump.