"Aid and Abet Punsters Day" by Marti Ronemus

Who was it that said, "Puns are the lowest form of humor?" I agree! And sadly, my husband and my BFF love puns and trade them back and forth while I stand by, groaning. Have they no shame? And to think that a whole day is set aside to applaud their efforts. Our Crazy Calendar has let me down this time.

To "aid and abet," I thought we'd look at bids with two meanings today. We're going to look at Michaels Cuebids and their responses. Unlike puns, I love those bids that are like BOGOs (buy one, get one free) and show multiple suits.

There's a good bit of disagreement on Michaels' point count. Some say that any 2-suited hands, 7-17ish points, is eligible for Michaels. Others say that hands with 11-15 points should be bid normally, higher ranking first. For the purpose of this quiz, we'll go with Mini-Maxi.

Let's give it a whirl.

Question 1

Your Hand
♠ 5 4
♥ 8 4 3
♦ Q 9 4 3
♣ K J 10 9

Q: 1 - South:

South	West	North	East
-	1♦	2♦**	Pass
?

**Michaels, showing 5-5 in the majors

A: 2♥: Pard's cuebid showed 5-5 in the majors, with probably 7-11 points. (How will we know if he has "maxi?" He'll bid again.) With him having 10 cards in two suits, we shouldn't have any interest in No-trump, even though we have stoppers in the other suits. We are just grateful we've got a reasonable fit!! He is asking us to take a preference. With our minimum hand, there's just no other bid.

Your result so far:

Open Question

Question 2

Your Hand
♠ 8 2
♥ 4 2
♦ 9 6 4 3 2
♣ K 8 4 3

Q: 2 - South:

South	West	North	East
-	1♠	2♠**	Pass
?

**Michaels, promising five Hearts and five-plus of an as-yet unnamed minor.

A: 2 No-trump: Here we planned just to hit the snooze alarm, but Michaels is forcing, forcing, forcing. We're not sure which minor Pard is holding, so our 2 No-trump bid asks him to name his own poison.

Your result so far:

Open Question

Question 3

Your Hand
♠ A Q 9 2
♥ A 10
♦ Q 8 4
♣ Q J 8 5

Q: 3 - South:

South	West	North	East
-	1♣	2♣**	Pass
?

**Michaels, promising 5-5 in the majors

A: 4♠: Are we a man or a mouse? A punster? Pard's only got three cards in the minors. We've got SUPER support with both his majors, and a sure nine-card (maybe more) Spade fit. We've got great help for him, so let's live a little.

Your result so far:

Open Question

Question 4

Your Hand
♠ 5 4
♥ A 9 4
♦ 8 5 4 2
♣ 8 4 3 2

Q: 4 - South:

South	West	North	East
-	1♣	2♣**	3 No-trump
?

**Promises 5-5 in the majors

A: Pass: You're kidding, right? If you tried to bid on this hand.... Aren't we lucky there was an intervening bid and we could slink of quietly? If there were no intervening bid, we'd have to bid 2♥.

Your result so far:

Open Question

Question 5

Your Hand
♠ A J 7 6
♥ A J 8
♦ 4 3
♣ J 7 6 3

Q: 5 - South:

South	West	North	East
-	1♦	2♦**	3♦
?

**Showing 5-5 in the majors

A: 4♠: This hand is from Eddie Kantar. He reminds us that the importance of the honors in our Pard's suits simply cannot be over-rated. What looks like a nice 11-point hand is really a game-goer. Once we get on lead, we're going to clean up.

And now to keep our minds off bad puns, we have a super hand to challenge you.

Your result so far:

Open Question

Play this Hand

Now that you've bid five hands, let's see how your play goes.

Overall Results

Your results: out of Average:

What next? You may enjoy playing our prepared hands series.
More informations on our website: www.VuBridge.com

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