Q
It is an absolute cinch to go down at four spades after West opens the queen of hearts. All South has to do is win the trick in dummy.
He will be unlucky in that West holds both the ace and queen of clubs and that East’s diamonds are such that there will be no way for South to establish dummy’s fourth diamond without letting East gain the lead, but like so much bad luck at the bridge table, South will have made a material contribution to it.
If South is a good bridge player and is willing to use the code word ARCH he will analyze the lead as top of equals: review the bidding and see that West will have almost all the missing high cards; count his potential losers and see that there are four of them and finally when he asks, “how can I make this hand?” he will see there is an extra chance.
Then he lets West hold that first trick. The sun shines, birds sing and eventually South will draw trumps; discard his diamond loser on a high heart: set up dummy’s fourth diamond and throw away the jack of clubs. He will have given away a heart to avoid the loss of a diamond and a club.
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