Today’s deal comes from the Common Game, but I have changed a spot card to focus the point of the hand. It is from a pairs game played all over the U.S.

The auction was highly unusual, with North lying in the bushes at his second turn, apparently prepared to play three clubs facing a weak hand, then driving to slam in no-trump when South showed four spades and a maximum pass.

West did well to lead a diamond, and declarer won in hand to lead a heart to the king. When it held, he cashed the club ace and king; and when West showed out, South decided that West was very unlikely to be short in spades. He made the excellent decision to cross to hand with the spade queen and lead a second heart. This time, West won the heart ace and continued the accurate defense by returning a diamond. That meant declarer was reduced to just one reentry to hand, and thus had to commit himself in spades right now. All declarer knew was that West had six hearts and one club and had led high then low in diamonds. But since the spots in diamonds had suggested that West had a doubleton and East had five, declarer took his life in his own hands and advanced the spade nine, running it when West played low.

Had West covered the spade nine, declarer would have been able to cross to the club jack and take the marked finesse in spades to bring home the slam without any guesswork.

Today is my final deal from Kit Woolsey’s excellent book, “The Language of Bridge.” This is certainly a very hard problem — and it involves a carding convention that may not be used by all my readers: third and lowest leads. Bear that caveat in mind while reading the deal.

You sit East, defending against four hearts, after South has jumped to game at his second turn. When your partner leads the spade queen, dummy plays low and you contribute the 10. Your partner now continues with the two, and when dummy plays low again, you take the nine as declarer follows suit.

It seems natural to shift to a diamond. But partner carefully chose his lowest spade at trick two. Not only must partner own the club ace for this play, but he also cannot have the diamond king or ace, or he would need a diamond shift.

So what is going on? Answer: West needs to know the right time to take his club ace. If declarer advances a club from his hand, partner won’t have the count in the suit, so he won’t know what to do. So you must give him the count yourself by leading the club two (playing third and lowest spot-card leads). Your partner would expect you to lead a small club with an odd number and a high club with an even number.

West will win his ace at once if you lead the club two; but if you lead the club nine, he will duck, playing declarer to have the hand shown, but with two small clubs and only six hearts.

Today’s deal is the second proposed to me by Jacques Guertin, and is almost identical to yesterday’s problem for East against three no-trump.

West again leads the spade six against three no-trump. Declarer wins with dummy’s queen and plays the club king. East ducks and sees West follow with the nine, then wins the next club as West follows with the two. What should East do next, and why?

Unlike yesterday’s deal, both West and East know holding up the club ace will not keep declarer from running the clubs, even if he has to expend an entry to dummy to do so. The real issue is what East should shift to after winning the club ace. Since both East and West know that, West’s card at trick two should specifically relate to that issue.

The Smith Echo is a signal designed to address that question, but be aware it can be played in many ways, and is very tempo-sensitive. Partnerships using it must try to follow in tempo in critical positions, and should be careful to plan their defense at trick one.

If you decide to play it, I suggest you use it as originally written. At no-trump when a count signal is not relevant, an immediate echo by West — in the suit declarer plays on first — asks for a shift. But East’s echo shows extras in the suit his partner led.

So West’s echo in clubs here shows no interest in a spade continuation, and East must win the club ace and play on diamonds. Had West not echoed, East would have led back a spade.

A regular reader of this column is Jacques Guertin, formerly of Canada, but now a resident of California. He asked me how to solve a specific defensive problem, but to properly address it for my readers, I will have to run two deals that appear very similar at first glance.

Let’s look at the possibly simpler of the two examples and postulate that West leads the spade six against three no-trump. Declarer wins the queen as East follows with his lowest spade, discouraging and specifically denying possession of the jack (as well as the ace and king, of course). Now declarer plays the club king, West giving count with the two. When dummy has no entries, West must let East know how many clubs he has, so that East will hold his ace until the right moment.

When, as here, West gives count at his first turn, he must use his second card as suit preference. So when he follows with the club nine (clearly the higher of his remaining clubs) on the second round of clubs, East knows to continue with spades to try to run that suit on defense rather than shifting to diamonds.

Having raised the issue of signaling on defense, it seems like a good moment to discuss the Smith Echo, a defensive signal against no-trump. As we shall see tomorrow, the defenders may be able to signal like or dislike about the opening lead by how they follow to declarer’s lead. Specifically, the opening leader can suggest a shift, and third hand can encourage the opening lead. More on this tomorrow.

Has it ever occurred to you that the act of setting bridge problems has something in common with Schrodinger’s Cat? I thought not. Maybe that is too eggheaded a comparison, but there is something to be said for the idea that solving a problem written down on paper is not the same as doing so at the table, because by giving someone a problem and making them aware that there is a catch, it ceases to be as much of a problem.

Enough of such nonsense: let us look at today’s deal, where I suspect if you were to encounter the hand at the table in four spades, a sizeable percentage of the population would ruff the opening lead and draw trumps, expecting to be able to claim 10 winners. But in problem-land, as opposed to real life, wouldn’t you expect something to be rotten in the state of Denmark?

If trumps are 4-1 with West having the length, you appear to be in deep trouble. What happens if it is East who has the long trump, with diamonds also breaking in unfriendly fashion? To solve the problem of transportation between your two hands, ruff the club king, then cash the spade ace, unblocking dummy’s spade nine. Take the spade king, unblocking the spade 10 from the board, and lead a diamond to the queen. You can next finesse the spade eight, draw the last trump and claim.

One of the countries that is fast rising to prominence at the North American Championships is Turkey. Here is Turkey’s Zeynep Yilmaz at the 2014 spring competition.

Against five clubs, West led the spade king, ruffed low in dummy. Yilmaz played a low club to the five, queen and six. Unless East had started with an unlikely doubleton club ace, declarer expected two trump losers; therefore, he would require the diamond king to be onside. But Yilmaz also expected a 4-2 diamond break, not only because that is the most likely distribution in abstract within the suit, but also because of West’s known six-card spade suit.

To come home in his game, he would need to be able to ruff the third round of diamonds with his club nine. Therefore East had to hold the doubleton club ace, or West must have begun with the doubleton club jack.

When Yilmaz advanced the diamond jack, it was covered by the king and ace. Yilmaz now played a low trump from dummy. East could not afford to rise with the ace and return a trump, as he would give up his second trump trick in the process. So he followed with the 10, won by West with the jack. Whatever West returned would be won in dummy, and a diamond could safely be ruffed with the trump nine.

Note that, in theory, it doesn’t help West to unblock the trump jack under the queen, since declarer could change tack and ruff a diamond high before playing the second trump.

Today’s deal is a relatively simple one from a recent Australian national event. Both tables bid the hand to five clubs by South, and at each table, the lead was the heart jack. However, one declarer looked further into the hand than did his counterpart, and he was suitably rewarded.

Where the unsuccessful declarer was at the helm, he won the opening lead and made haste to pitch his spade loser on the top heart. Then he played on trumps and could not avoid losing three tricks in the minors when clubs failed to behave.

David Beauchamp was South in the other room, and he also received the lead of the heart jack. However, after taking his two heart winners to pitch the spade loser, he tried a diamond to the jack and king.

If anything but a trump came back, declarer’s plan was to ruff a diamond in dummy, then lead trumps from the top, with something like a 2 in 3 chance of playing clubs for one loser. West continued hearts, so declarer duly put that plan into effect. If, however, West had shifted to trumps, Beauchamp would have brought the whole club suit in with no loser, so he would have come to 11 tricks in a different fashion.

This deal exemplifies the adage that there is no suit you are better off leading yourself than forcing the opponents to play it for you. Let them do the heavy lifting, and you will be pleased by the results.

Kit Woolsey’s latest book, “The Language of Bridge” covers a lot of ground. One of the topics discussed is how to help your partner do the right thing, as well as instructing you when to make the decision for the partnership if you know what is appropriate.

Here, after North has shown a balanced 12-14 points and you have discreetly decided to stay out of the proceedings, your partner leads the diamond queen against South’s four spades. You can see your own hand as East, plus the dummy, and the route to four tricks on defense may seem straightforward.

Defeating the contract should be simple, assuming declarer wins the first diamond, draws trumps and loses a club finesse. You will underlead your diamond king, and partner can put a heart through.

But can you see a potential problem? Declarer might sneakily duck the first round of diamonds. If you have encouraged, partner will not think to shift to a heart — why would he, since you might have king-third of diamonds and no heart queen? After a diamond continuation, the defense is kaput since West no longer has an entry for the heart play.

The secret is that you must discourage with the diamond two at trick one, even though you are happy with the lead. Now if declarer ducks, partner will know to shift to a heart.

Moral: it is worth remembering that attitude signals relate to the whole hand, not just the suit led.

The opportunity for an avoidance play presents itself when you can determine that one of the opponents is the danger hand, either because he has winners to cash or because he might lead a suit that would put your contract in jeopardy, whereas his partner cannot make those plays.

In such scenarios, you should be prepared to invest a trick to achieve your target, or to maximize your chances of keeping the feared opponent off play.

Today’s deal is just such an example; the easy part of the problem is to determine which one is the danger hand; once you have done that, the avoidance play should come easily.

Would you raise one spade to two as South at your second turn? I could go either way. But let’s say you choose the rebid of one no-trump and end up in three no-trump on a top club lead. Good technique is to duck two clubs, trying to cut the defenders’ communications. Having won the third club, you can see your way home in three no-trump even if you only emerge with four diamond tricks — as long as you keep West, the presumed danger hand, off lead.

The way to do this is to lead towards the diamond ace from hand. If West has Q-10-x of diamonds, there is nothing you can do. But if East has the singleton 10, it will appear at once. You can then successfully pass the diamond jack and keep West off play. Even if you lose to the doubleton diamond queen in East, that would constitute very cheap insurance.