Page 701 - WhyAsInY

Appendix B
Various Games
Bridge is a card game using a standard fifty-two-card deck that is played by four players in two competing partnerships, with the partners sitting opposite each other at a card table. After all of the cards are dealt, the players “bid” (to see which team will play the hand), by calling out the suit names in clockwise order to establish which suit will be the “trump” suit in which the hand will be played (or whether there will be no trump suit) and which number of “tricks” in excess of six will be won by the partnership that makes the highest bid. A trick consists of four cards of the same suit played in succession, with the highest card in the suit that is led winning (or if one or more players do not have a card of the suit played, with the highest trump card winning). The first player of the partnership that wins the bid to have named the trump suit—or to have said, “No trump,” if the hand will be played without a trump suit—is known as the “declarer.” The declarer plays the hand while the declarer’s partner exposes his or her hand, is known as the “dummy,” and does not participate in the play. Bridge provides a wonderful way to socialize and to argue in front of friends.
The word “trump” has now, understandably, become hard to use. The phrase “no trump” remains very much in fashion.
Cap pistols were toy guns that would be loaded with a red roll of paper holding a series of bumps (caps) of some compound that, on being struck by the hammer of the gun, would make a load noise and actually emit smoke and an acrid odor, an odor that I came to love.
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