Being the heart of baseball season, grand slams come to mind. Picture the bottom of the ninth inning, two outs, and Mudville trailing 3-0. Now switch over to the bridge table!
Casey, South, responded 1 to Spacey’s 1 opening, and the immediate raise to 2 foretold good news for Mudville. Not to waste any time, Casey launched into Mudwood, and after the inevitable reply of no aces, bid 5 NT to ask for kings. Shazam! Spacey’s welcome answer loaded the bases, so Casey stepped back in the batter’s box and swung for the fence. Tomorrow’s feature in the Mudville Monitor will surely be Casey’s grand slam!
Predictably, Spacey’s dummy was rife with spaces, so Casey had his work cut out to bring this one home:
Casey gave it his best, but there was no joy in Mudville… the mighty Casey has struck out.
Construct a West hand so that 7 cannot be made against best defense.
That’s easy! The real goal is for 7 to be defeated by the fewest opening leads. Ties will be broken by the lowest deal freakness* and secondarily by the most HCP West.
*sum of the four hand freaknesses, which can be as low as 3 given the fixed N-S hands
Before reading further, see if you can pick the West hand that gives the best solution:
*Contestants had to construct their own solutions. Multiple choice was only added for this writeup.
Given the North and South hands, the object was to complete the deal so that South could not make 7 against best defense, and with the fewest opening leads that defeat the contract. Everyone who succeeded with two leads or fewer is ranked below (next best was four leads). Ties are broken by the lowest freakness of the entire deal, and secondarily by the most HCP held by West.
Samuel Pahk (Massachusetts) came up with this clever construction, having the lowest possible deal freakness and West holding all but one of the missing HCP. Alas, there are two successful leads instead of the optimal one.
Leading either black suit costs a trick (note the Q allows the 9 to be pinned with a ruffing finesse). Leading a trump allows declarer to win cheaply then ruff two diamonds in South, eventually squeezing West in the black suits. Hence West must lead a diamond; more specifically the Q or 9 to nullify South’s 8, which leaves declarer stymied for any winning line.
The next construction by Filip Czaplicki (Poland) achieves the desired “one lead to beat” but with an undesirably high deal freakness.
If West makes any passive lead (say a trump) declarer can maneuver to ruff a diamond in hand, then squeeze East in the pointed suits, thanks to the twin entry in spades. West can prevent this by leading the Q to remove one of the entries, leaving declarer no counter.
Jacco Hop (Netherlands) was on to my scheme and greatly reduced the deal freakness with this clever construction.
Jacco Hop: Knowing Richard, the eights in the South hand must have a purpose. A spade lead attacks the communication for a ruffout squeeze* against West after ruffing two diamonds, and the nine is required to not let declarer solve the spade suit.
*or alternately a simple squeeze with the twin entry in spades
Our top three solvers showed how to give West another HCP while keeping the same deal freakness. What else, but a trump lead to make America (not) great again.
Suppose West starts the 9 (a plain-suit lead that doesn’t lose a trick outright) covered by the 10, jack and ace. Declarer maneuvers to ruff two clubs in dummy, then the last trump squeezes West in the pointed suits. The same denouement occurs if West leads the Q, won by the king; then the 10 (covered by jack and ace) transfers the only spade stopper to West. The stiff trump lead prevents this by allowing East to guard spades if necessary.
Hendrik Nigul: To beat the contract, West must lead the singleton trump and then follow suit.
Richard Stein: To ‘K’ Casey, West must lead his singleton heart.
No one discovered the optimal solution, which I’ll admit was a bit devious. In order to achieve the lowest deal freakness it was necessary to give East most of the HCP, which was contrary to the secondary tiebreaker. Hence solvers were led astray by their efforts to beef up the West hand. Take a gander at this layout:
If West makes a passive lead (say a trump) declarer plays three rounds of diamonds then three rounds of clubs, establishing both minor tens but leaving East with longer trumps. When the good 10 is led from dummy, East has two losing options: (1) Ruff and be overruffed, allowing declarer to draw trumps and score the 10, or (2) pitch a spade, South doing the same, then ending with a crossruff. However, declarer’s communication for this line is ruined by an opening spade lead, which must be the nine* to retain the defensive spade stopper.
*The Q does not work, as East alone must then guard the 10, giving declarer a simple squeeze in the black suits after establishing the 10.
The mighty Casey, holding all the aces and eights, should have known he was dead weight for his team. But at least he fared better than ‘Wild’ Bill Hickok, whose two-pair of the same was the last hand he ever held, and Hickok’s only grand slam occurred postmortem when the lid of his coffin was slammed shut. Sorry, that was gross, but I need to stir up controversy to increase participation.
Speaking of dead weight, the closing words will come from:
Charles Blair: If I had done the Snow White remake, the dwarfs would sing their trademark number while picketing.
Jacco Hop: Neat; I solved this quickly compared to your other puzzles. In another sport you might say a slam dunk for me.
Acknowledgments to the classic poem by Ernest Thayer (1863-1940)© 2025 Richard Pavlicek
by Richard Pavlicek by Richard Pavlicek