The Mechanical Duck by Foxymoron

 There was a remarkable play by the deserved winners of the Woodberry Pairs this week, when Dominic Flint, president of the LMBA, and his wife Pamela Reiss won with a fine score of 69%. I recall Tiger Woods scoring a 69 on a tough course at Bethpage Black, on his way to winning the US Open, and he was being interviewed by the golf journalist Sarah Stirk. "If you had offered me a 69 this morning I would have taken it with pleasure!", said Tiger with a grin.

It is sometimes a mechanical reaction to duck the first round of a suit with the ace. The mechanical duck was invented in 1739 by Jacques de Vaucanson. He was an inventor who created an automaton that was a mechanical duck. The robotic duck would quack, move its head to eat some grain which would appear to digest and after a short time, would discharge a mixture that looked and smelled like duck droppings.

What has this do with bridge?, you might well ask. Well, Pamela found a cunning play to make her game on the following hand, inducing East to make a "mechanical or robotic duck".

The lead of the jack of clubs to her queen gave the contract a bit of a chance, and Pamela made the clever play at trick two of leading the queen of spades from hand. It looked for all the world as if she was hoping to use the king of spades as an entry for a red-suit finesse, and East ducked which does indeed look natural. Now Pamela played the ace of clubs and another club discarding the king of spades. Poor East was helpless. A trump lead picked up the suit for one loser. A diamond allowed the king to be picked up, and a club lead allowed declarer to ruff and later pick up the hearts. Pamela was the only declarer to make 4H, so scored an outright top, and East let through the overtrick late in the play, but that did not cost at all.