Once upon a time there was a kitten — not just an ordinary kitten, but an angelic messenger to bring happy memories of the good times. “Mabel Jr.” is no longer a kitten, now a year-and-a-half old, and she’s been bugging me to teach her bridge. No problem! I grabbed a deck of cards, dealt out two hands and asked her to bid something. She bid: “Meow, meow, meow!” Sorry, no threes. Go Fish! “M-mm-mm!” she purred, so I fixed salmon for lunch, and now she thinks she’s a bridge player. Close enough.
Well, that’s one cat tale; I won’t bore you with eight more. It’s puzzle time!
Each of Deals 1-9 has a common feature with one of Deals A-I. Your job is to pair them up based on the most unlikely common feature. Trivial matches like “both deals have a club void” rate to be as successful as Mabel Jr. in 7 NT doubled. Enter a letter beside each number.
Three of the five human solvers were correct on all matches, but only Duncan Bell provided all the right reasons. This is hardly a surprise and fittingly is Duncan’s cat o’ninth win in my puzzle contests. His previous eight wins were The Twelve of Spades, Just Another Zero, High Stakes Rubber, Frozen, Bridge with the Abbott, Pay No Taxes!, High Cards Amiss and Middle School Mania. Further, he accomplished this in less than five years, which percentagewise puts him ahead of my all-time leader, Tim Broeken (Netherlands).
Florida makes a comeback! After a long absence from my leaderboards, the return of my home state brings great felinity, I mean felicity. Mabel Jr. actually chose the matches, as I put her treats in a tic-tac-toe grid, and the order she ate them became her choices. Okay, okay, I’m a cheetah, as I coaxed her into some right choices, lest she end up in a catatonic state — is that Florida?
Five of the nine matches are related to makable contracts, so to aid recognition, each deal is accompanied by a matrix of winnable tricks, assuming purrfect play all-around.
Everybody makes 1 NT! Nothing but sevens under the notrump column shows that whoever declares 1 NT can make it against any defense. The implication of this phenomenon is that all hands are endplayed on the opening lead; whichever suit is led costs a trick.
Duncan Bell: One notrump makes by all hands. This and all contract related claims that follow are with best play at double-dummy.
Richard Stein: Opening lead zugzwang; 1 NT makes by anyone.
Only makable game is a 3-3 fit! Believe it or not, N-S make 4 on Deal 2, and E-W make 4 on Deal E. All other game contracts fail.
Nicholas Greer: Each deal has only one makeable game, and it’s in a 3-3 fit.
Makable or makeable? I thought these were just alternate spellings, but an online search showed a difference. “Makable” means capable to be made, while “makeable” means able to be made, and only the latter allows comparative forms (more makeable, most makeable). Therefore, “makable” is correct for double-dummy bridge purposes.
All four hands have the same Kaplan-Rubens point count: 10.60 on Deal 3, and 11.20 on Deal G. This phenomenon is extremely rare because of the fine gradation (0.05 increments). K-R points can be found for any hand with my Bridge Hand Evaluator. For a complete explanation see Kaplan-Rubens Evaluation Stats.
Duncan Bell: All hands have equal K-R point counts to at least one decimal place.
Card ranks in each suit are alphabetic. For instance, Ace-Jack-Nine-Six-Three. The longest possible alphabetic suit is seven cards; East’s diamonds on Deal I is one of only three such holdings. For more than you’d ever want to know on this topic see Alphabetic Suits.
Richard Stein: Those suits look suspicious, but I can’t quite herd every kitten… [Aha!] All suit holdings in standard order are also in alphabetical order.
Alphabetic or alphabetical? Although casually interchangeable, proper distinction found online is that “alphabetic” means relating to an alphabet, while “alphabetical” means arranged in the order of an alphabet. This makes my usage wrong — so sue me — and “alphabetical order” is redundant, as it should be “alphabetic order” or one word “alphabetical.”
The only makable games are 4 by West and 4 by East. The need to right-side contracts is common, but what’s right for one is almost always right for another. Opposite right-siding is rare. For the record, 4 by East is defeated by a diamond lead on Deal 5 and a heart lead on Deal C; 4 by West is defeated by a trump lead on Deal 5 and the J lead on Deal C.
Duncan Bell: Game in both majors, but one only makes declared by East and the other by West.
No player makes any contract! Not a seven in sight shows that any bid results in a minus score against best defense — a perfect passout, or “par zero” deal. My database of 10,485,760 random solved deals has only 25 of these, so it’s about a 0.0002 percent chance.
Nicholas Greer: No makeable contract for anyone.
Let this be a warning: One more “makeable” and you’re outta here!
Card ranks in each suit are symmetric. An eight is the middle rank, so every odd-length suit must contain it. Otherwise, each ace must pair with a two, each king with a three, etc. And who could argue that a void is not symmetric? A corollary to symmetric suits is that each hand must have the same total rank count: 13 × 8 = 104 (A=14 K=13 …). For more on this silliness see Symmetric Suits.
Richard Stein: All suit holdings are symmetrical about the median rank, eight.
Symmetric or symmetrical? Online consensus is the words have identical meanings and are interchangeable, though I found two plausible distinctions: (1) “Symmetric” is more often used in technical fields. (2) “Symmetric” takes two arguments, but “symmetrical” takes only one: If the left and right halves of a face are symmetric, then the face is symmetrical.
N-S make game exactly in every strain! Three notrump, four of a major, five of a minor — you name it, N-S make it (but no overtricks). My database has only 15 such deals. Checking E-W adds another 19, which makes the chance for either side about 0.0003 percent.
Mabel Pavlicek Jr: Meow 3 NT, meow 4 , meow 4 , meow 5 , meow 5 .
Best poker hand is two pair. For a bridge hand this is the worst possible (one pair is impossible because the remaining unmatched cards must form a straight). The chance of this is 0.0018 percent.
Nicholas Greer: On both deals one side makes 3 NT but no suit game with only 21 HCP.
True of course, but empirical analysis shows this to be 0.2322 percent for exactly 21 HCP (0.3922 for 21 or fewer) which is 129 (218) times more likely than the poker scenario.
Duncan Bell: Best poker hand on each deal is QQTTA.
Certainly acceptable, and even less likely than my given reason. However, no catnip for:
Richard Stein: Worst possible poker pot winner: QQTTA. Not sure of this…
No, the worst winning poker hands are shown by this deal:
North and South would split the pot with jacks and deuces, over West’s 10s and sevens, and East’s 10s and sixes, each with an ace kicker. For a clear win (no tie) it takes jacks and threes, e.g., swap the 4 and 3. For more on bridge and poker see World Series of Bridge.
Richard Stein: I wanted to verify my answers, but my cat allergies are kicking in. Ah-choo!
Anony-mouse: Enough with the puzzles! I am trying to improve my bridge game, and you waste my time with some stupid cat-and-mouse game. Get a life, you grimalkin addict!
Mabel Pavlicek Jr: Don’t believe anything you read here! I was correct on all nine matches and submitted my entry two days before this Duncan donut dude.
© 2021 Richard Pavlicek
by Richard Pavlicek by Richard Pavlicek