Margaret Mead, a cultural anthropologist who died in 1978, said, “I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world.”

At the bridge table, describing your hand to partner should help your side to reach the best contract. However, it also gives information to the opponents. In addition, as we have seen this week, the bids, passes and cards played by the defenders can be revealing to the declarer.

In this final example, South is in four spades. West cashes the heart ace and heart king, then shifts to a diamond. How should South continue?

After three passes and South’s one-spade opening bid, if West makes a takeout double, North might jump to four spades, quoting the Law of Total Tricks. However, with no singleton and so many losers, that would be an overbid. Better is to pre-empt with three spades. (Over a takeout double, two no-trump shows a limit raise with at least four trumps.)

South wins trick three, draws trumps, cashes the rest of the diamonds ending in the dummy (to delay the evil moment), then leads the club jack. When East plays low smoothly, what should declarer do?

West has already shown up with nine points: the heart ace-king and spade queen. If he has the club ace too, he would have opened the bidding. So, South should go up with his club king.

Finally, note East’s smooth low-club play at trick nine – he knows that the defenders need two club tricks to defeat the contract. He must make declarer guess what to do.