How good are you at Bridge?

LELIA HATTERSLEY

Presenting a group of tricky Bridge problems that will test your mettle and your card-sense

End plays, at Bridge or Contract, bear no close relationship to actual games. To begin with they are played at "double dummy"; that is, with all the cards exposed. Again it is seldom that the situations depicted in end plays could have been reached by any logical process of bidding and play. Confronted with the galaxy of Aces, Kings and Queens to which North and South, East and West have clung with such tenacity throughout the play, we feel constrained to ask "How do these hands get that way?" But, it will be interesting to test your wits on the problems—always with the cards laid out before you. You might even construct some problems of your own, just to annoy your friends. The solving of end play problems calls for the exercise of much card-sense. These little puzzles are really fascinating.

In the play of the following hands, for instance, remember that all the cards are exposed.

South's necessary tricks must be won against a perfect defense, that is, against any possible defense which his opponents can muster. If these problems seem at first to be easy to solve, I suggest that you try them again with different defenses on the part of the adversaries. A surprise may await you.

The correct answers to these problems will be published in the July issue of Vanity Fair in connection with the article to be devoted, in that issue, to bridge.