1. On the surface, it might seem that it doesn’t matter whether you cover the queen of diamonds with the king or not. But to make certain of the contract, you should duck the queen.

Assuming that South has the ace — certainly a reasonable supposition — the contract is cold if you let North’s queen hold the first trick. The trouble with the king play is that South can win with the ace and return a diamond, allowing North to win and shift to a heart. If South then turns up later with both the king and jack of hearts, you will eventually lose two hearts and two diamonds and go down one.

But if you duck the diamond, you are safe against any attack. If North continues the suit, you can win any return by South, cash the A-K of clubs and ruff a club in dummy, draw trump, then lead a heart to the ten. Even if South wins with the jack, you have the rest of the tricks against any return.

If instead North shifts to a heart at trick two, you rise with the ace, draw trump, play the A-K and ruff a club, then lead the king of diamonds. South wins with the ace, but whatever he returns, you are home, losing only two diamonds and a heart.

2. You start by assuming that North has the king of spades, since if South has it you will make at least 10 tricks via a spade finesse. You also assume that North’s seven is his fourth-best heart, which means he might have led from K-Q-8-7-x, K-10-8-7-x or Q-10-8-7-x. (With K-Q-10-7-x, he presumably would have led the king.)

The best way of dealing with these three possibilities — which constitute the only real threat to the contract — is to go up with the ace at trick one. This play fails in the first case but succeeds in the other two even when North has the spade king.

The reason for rising with the ace is that it blocks the defenders’ hearts when South started with the K-x or Q-x, while ducking the opening heart lead allows South to win and return a heart, unblocking the suit.

Tomorrow: A tantalizing problem.

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