East-West Divide by Foxymoron

 The Prime Meridian runs through East London and divides the East and West. Greenwich was chosen for no clear reason. Just as there was no real logic as to whether 6NT should be played by West or East on the hand below. It is a good contract, but only two pairs reached it, and they shared the top. And they did much bettter than the two pairs who played in the hopeless 6S, which had no chance with the 5-1 trump split:

Science or nature, that is the question. The other pair reaching 6NT played Precision, and their auction was 1C (17+) -1S (5+ hearts or 4 hearts and a 5+minor) -1NT (relay) - 2D (5 or 7 hearts and another 4 card suit).- 2H (relay) - 2S (5 hearts, 5 clubs) - 3NT - (no fit, 17-19) - 4NT (invitational to slam) - 6NT.  Luckily, West did not bid clubs at any point, so North could not get a double in for a club lead, so the only chance to beat it "went West" and 12 tricks rolled in.

The earliest occurrence that I have found of "to go West" in the sense "to die" is from the Western Mail of Cardiff, appropriately as I am writing this on St David's Day, of Tuesday 22nd September 1914, in an account of a bombardment of the British lines near Soissons, on the Aisne River, in northern France: One man was splashed with the blood of his comrade, who had been blown in half by a piece of shrapnel a few hours ago. The butt end of his own rifle was chipped off by a broken bit of spent shell. He was glad of his escape—“a very near call”—but was sorry for the friend “who had gone West,” as he called it.

The auction in the room above was entirely natural. 1S was natural , 2H was forcing for one round, and 3D was game-forcing. 3S was preference and I think East should now bid 4D, but chose 4S. West bid RKCB for spades, and 5S showed 2 and the queen, Now 5NT asked "how many kings?" which is an old-fashioned but perfectly sound method. 6D showed one, and West bid 6NT which might from his point of view have been on a finesse. Mary, North, led a club, and the queen held, and it was now easy enough to take the diamond finesse for the overtrick. South just won the king of diamonds. If North had not led a club, the contract would still have made as the diamonds were 3-3.