When I recently ran into Syvia and asked her to give me one of her old-time lollapaloozas, she came up with this deal where she held the East cards. It occurred shortly after she joined the club, and as usual she was playing in the expert game even though she had started to play bridge only a few weeks earlier.

At the time, Sylvia’s shortcomings and indiscretions were continuously called to her attention by her exasperated partners. Unfortunately, this constant flow of unsolicited admonitions served only to confuse her and muddle what little knowledge she had already accumulated.

It was therefore not surprising that when she picked up the East hand, after having experienced a mild disaster on the preceding deal, her thoughts were in a state of disarray.

Sylvia won the opening diamond lead and, dimly recalling the rule that she should lead into strength and through weakness (actually, she had been told exactly the opposite), she returned the deuce of spades into dummy’s A-Q!

Declarer played the seven and took West’s nine with the queen. After drawing trump, he then led a club to the nine, losing to the queen. Sylvia stuck to her guns and again led a spade, West’s jack forcing dummy’s ace.

South could do no better than lead the king of clubs, losing to Sylvia’s ace. Sylvia then cashed her king of spades, and South went down one.

Declarer, of course, would have made the contract had Sylvia not come up with this extraordinary defense. Without the spade shift at trick two, he would have had time to establish two club winners in dummy to take care of his potential spade losers.

Confusion has its own virtues.

Tomorrow: Test your play.