Lots of bidding and some card-play

The International Bridge Press Association’s Book of the Year award went to The Language of

Bidding by Kit Woolsey (Bridge Winners Press). The reader learns how to analyse auctions using Bringlish: bridge English. There are 11 chapters on various aspects of bidding, and a final one on using Bringlish in defence. Each ends with a quiz. The assumed system is two-over-one with a 15-17 no-trump and a semiforcing one-no-trump response to one of a major. But even if you and your partner employ different methods, you will still gain a lot of useful insights to help your bidding. There is one declarer-play problem in the chapter titled The Dog Didn’t

Bark. South is in four spades. West leads the diamond three (lowest from an odd number or third-highest from an even number), East plays the nine, and declarer wins with his 10. South plays a diamond to dummy’s ace, then runs the spade 10. West wins with the queen, cashes the spade ace and continues with the diamond king. After ruffing on the board, how should South continue? He needs to find the heart queen, but before choosing, he should play on clubs. West wins the second club trick with his jack and tries to cash the king. Now what? West is marked with 14 points: spadeace-queen,diamond king-jack and club king-jack. (East played third hand high at trick one; and if West had held all three club honours, he would have led that suit at trick one.) West is also balanced, so, if he had the heart queen, he would have opened one no-trump. South plays East for the heart queen.Woof,woof!