Bridge Timing the play A club player

came to me after a duplicate game in which he and his partner had finished somewhere south of average.

“I could count the mistakes I made on one hand,” he said woefully, “provided I had 40 fingers.”

His problem — the same one that afflicts many less experienced players — is playing the wrong card at the wrong time. At today’s 3NT,

South took the ace of spades and led a club, attacking his best suit. East grabbed his ace to fire back a spade: jack, queen.

The numbers in

the black cells are clues. Numbers above the slash are across clues, numbers below the slash are down clues. The goal is to enter digits 1-9 in the white cells to add up to the number clues. You cannot enter any digit more than once when adding up a clue.

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