ETCETERA / Bridge

THERE WAS a curious possibility on this week's deal. The winning line for declarer was not at all obvious and yet, perhaps, not too difficult. See if you can spot it, with the advantage of seeing all four hands.

North

S none

H 8 6 5 3

D J 9 7 6 3

C A K 10 5

West

9 7 6 5

9

K 10 5 4 2

8 4 2

East

4 2

A Q J 10

A Q 8

Q J 9 7

South

A K Q J 10 8 3

K 7 4 2

nobe

6 3

Playing the strange mixture of a weak no-trump and five-card majors, East opened One Club and South ended the auction with a bid of Four Spades. West led the nine of hearts and, after winning with the ace, East returned the queen. South's king was trumped by West, who now switched to a club. Declarer won on the table, ruffed a diamond to get back to hand, and rattled off all his trumps. Discarding after dummy, East was in no difficulty and eventually came to two more tricks.

For a squeeze to have been effective, declarer would have liked to have lost three tricks first, not just two. Then the timing would have been right. As the lead was undoubtedly a singleton, South could have achieved this by letting East's queen of hearts win the second trick. He covers the jack with his king and West ruffs as before but now the run of the trumps severely embarrasses East. Dummy's last two cards are CK 10, declarer is left with H7 C6 and East has to find a fatal discard from H10, CQ J.