Jolly old Saint NicholasHeld South’s cards today.All he had was just a queen,Not much else to say.
Any-one with half a brainKnows to pass is proper.Saint Nick took another view,“Gotta show my stopper!
“Notrump is the place to be;Heart tricks I should gain.But I must admit to you,I’ve been found insane!”
So there rests “Crazy Claus” in 3 NT redoubled with only 7 combined HCP. On most occasions this would be a debacle, never winning a trick (minus 5200) but a bright “Star in the East” shone through. After losing the first four tricks, Nick had the rest. Plus 1000!
Note that 3 NT is cold from either side (North or South declarer) against any defense. I am confident that 7 HCP is the fewest to achieve this remarkable feat. For my holiday puzzle, let’s lower the contract by a notch:
What is the fewest HCP to make 2 NT from either side against any defense?
1. Before reading further, make your best guess:
For the contest, respondents were required to submit a deal to illustrate their answer. A further goal (tiebreaker) was to make the sum of all North-South card ranks as low as possible, and between them, South as low as possible.
Quit
Congrats to Tom Slater, whose win comes as no surprise, not only from past contests but with the anagram “most alert.” His previous wins include Lilliputian Squeezes (2015) and Against Worst Defense (2017). Tom was the first of only four to submit the optimal solution, ranked below by date and time of entry.
This puzzle was inspired while reviewing my collection of bridge records, Fewest HCP To Make Notrump, which was published circa 2008. The records included the following deal:
Back then I wrote that 2 NT could be made against any defense from either side with only 6 HCP.* Whoa! Could this really have escaped readers’ scrutiny for 12 years? I now saw the improvement, as of course did the winners of this contest.
*The flawed deal has been removed and replaced by Tom Slater’s construction.
My original oversight was to place the trick source opposite the stopper, which required a 10-card fit to provide five tricks and an entry; hence at least a jack was forced. Placing both in the same hand eschews the entry requirement, so a 9-card fit suffices, thus lowering the record by 1 HCP. Below is the solution by our winner:
No matter how the play begins, East must lead spades at least twice as the A-K are driven out.
Samuel Pahk: Whether East cashes his four side winners or not, North must get three spades and five hearts eventually.
Tom Slater: The 7 and 7 are interchangeable, but I prefer this construction, as 1 by North can be beaten with a low spade lead, and the par contract is 7 NT×.
Good observation, as 7 by East nets 1440, and 7 NT× down five is only 1400. Yippee! (East-West will cry all the way to the bank.) Note that 7 by West, the realistic declarer, is defeated by the A lead; South eventually gets a trump trick.
Each successful solver produced the same layout (ignoring suit identity and swaps of East-West or 7 and 7) to obtain minimal rank sums for North-South (160) and South (52). Any attempt to reduce the strength of the “stopper suit” was futile, as noted by:
Nicholas Greer: Weaker spade holdings (and K-Q-10-9) all fail when East brilliantly unblocks hearts before leading a spade.
Hmm… Sensible words from a first name jolly and insane? Sobering words from a last name rhyming with beer? Go figure!
Charles Blair: Ho, ho, ho! It would be interesting if the optimal deal to make 2 NTrequired fewer HCP than the optimal deal to make 1 NT.
Interesting? More like The Twilight Zone. Minimal HCP requirements to make notrump contractsfrom either side against best defense are unique and progressive:
1 NT→4 2 NT→5 3 NT→7 4 NT→8 5 NT→9 6 NT→13 7 NT→17
Alert! Puzzle solvers needed to evict a jerk from the White House: Trump Moves to Lilliput
Happy New Year!
© 2020 Richard Pavlicek
by Richard Pavlicek by Richard Pavlicek