Complete! Included: Results, Masterpoints, Attendance, Tomorrow's Schedule and Checking Out.

Alert: your browser may be showing you an old version of a page which is updated often. F5 (computer) or the ↻ button (phone or tablet) will get you the most recent version.

Checking Out

One problem with doing puzzles for Daily Bulletins based on dates is that tournaments tend to be held on the same dates year to year. We've done puzzles based on births, and news events, and every time I put them together I realize I've done this before. So, a new angle this time: famous people who died on this day. Here are five (seven, actually) from August 20: how many can you guess? Answers near the end of the page.

• Three men, Peter Canepanova, Barnaba Niccolò Maria Luigi Chiaramonti, and Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto, coincidentally died on this date after holding the same office during their lifetimes.
• American businesswoman who built a New York real estate empire with her husband, and who served twenty-one months in prison for conspiracy, tax evasion, and mail fraud after a high-profile trial at which her nickname, the "Queen of Mean," was well-publicized.
• American session musician who was a member of The Wrecking Crew, the group of Los Angeles musicians who played on many hit songs of the 60s and 70s; who played the piano introduction and accompaniment for the Simon & Garfunkel hit Bridge Over Troubled Water.
• American comedian who was one of the first female comics to become a household name in America, best known for her deprecating humor and her cackling laugh.
• American comedian known as the "King of Comedy" in America and "Le Roi du Crazy" in France; he hosted a telethon benefitting Muscular Dystrophy and appeared in over 60 motion pictures.

Today's Bridge Advice

(A Useful Reprint From Last Year's Bulletins)

I used to think that it was impossible to look at something without seeing it; then they invented BridgeMates.

The little gadgets have made many things a lot easier for Directors. We no longer have to marvel at handwriting that produces ambiguous figures that could somehow equally be an '8' or a '2.' But we do get notices on our computer screen when something entered and accepted just doesn't seem to make sense, despite being viewed and accepted by members of both sides.

Let's all resolve to allow North the short time needed to enter the result at the end, and one of East or West the time to look it over carefully (some have mastered the technique of hitting the button while looking elsewhere!) before hitting the accept button, before we bombard them with questions about the auction or the cardplay. The suit of the contract and the declarer matters even if the score is the same: if you tell us that 4♥ was the contract and it was actually 4♠, the computer will light up the Director's screen if 4♠ is impossible. If you tell us that North was the declarer and it was actually South, the computer might be confused if the contract can only be made from the South hand. We can't always tell whether you have the suit or the declarer wrong when something lights up, so help us out here and be sure it's right.

It will take a little more time to get the machines up and running in a tournament than at the club game, but they should be ready to go by the time you complete the first board. It never saves time to ignore the machine entirely until the end of the round and then catch up. It just makes it look on the Director's computer like you're taking a very long time on the first board. Plus, it adds extra time at the end of the round as you do catch up and try to score two or three boards as players are moving for the next round. Best habit to get into as North is to enter the contract into the machine when the auction ends, so that at the end of the play you need only enter the result and you don't have to ask what the contract was.

If you are not playing the boards in numerical order for some reason, there is no need to wait and enter them in numerical order later. Just backspace through the auto-added board number and change it to the one you are playing now. You'll get a message asking you to confirm, but this is better than waiting until the end of the round and then trying to catch up.

Mistakes will need a Director to fix once accepted (until the East-West pair accepts you can backspace back and correct anything that is wrong), and it is best to call right away and get it done. These machines work well if players take a little extra care to avoid mistakes that need to be fixed later.

Brain Workout Section!

For those of you who used to like the puzzles I printed in the old bulletins, here is a link to an online version: one of the puzzles that I used to feature in the old paper Bulletins, but it is easy to play on a computer as well. Not so easy on a tablet or phone, since most of the puzzles require right-clicks, not easily done in a tablet or phone environment. Galaxies gives you a grid of cells, some containing dots in the center or on the edges. Your job is to divide the grid into regions of cells, so that each region has a symmetrical shape (rotating the shape 180 degrees creates the exact same shape) and has only one dot at its exact center. You'll click on the borders between cells to draw in boundaries between regions, and when a new region is created that fits the rules, the region will be coloured white. However, this shape, while fitting the rules, may not be part of the actual solution, and you may have to adjust the shape later to make other regions also fit! Strategy: Start on the outside and work your way into the center. A few region borders will be clear from the placement of the white dots and at some point you'll have to guess the shape from the clues; remember that all regions are symmetrical so if you add a cell to a shape, you have to add a corresponding cell at the other end to maintain the symmetry. Click on the puzzle you want to try at the right (or the caption below) to go to the page with all the instructions you'll need. These puzzles come from Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection (see below) and there are links there to apps for most devices.	Easy puzzle (McBruce's time: 1min 24sec)
	Medium puzzle (McBruce's time: 3min 37sec)
	Tricky puzzle (McBruce's time: 3min 59sec)

The five (seven, actually) people who died on August 20 referred to above were:

• John XIV (? - 984), Pius VII (1742 - 1823), and Pius X (1835 - 1914), were the three men, Peter Canepanova, Barnaba Niccolò Maria Luigi Chiaramonti, and Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto, who coincidentally died on this date after holding the same office (Bishop of Rome, Pope of the Catholic Church) during their lifetimes.
• Leona Helmsley (1920-2007) was the American businesswoman who built a New York real estate empire with her husband, and who served twenty-one months in prison for conspiracy, tax evasion, and mail fraud after a high-profile trial at which her nickname, the "Queen of Mean," was well-publicized.
• Larry Knechtel (1940-2009) was the American session musician who was a member of The Wrecking Crew, the group of Los Angeles musicians who played on many hit songs of the 60s and 70s; piano player for the Simon & Garfunkel hit Bridge Over Troubled Water.
• Phyllis Diller (1917-2012) was the American comedian who was one of the first female comics to become a household name in America, best known for her deprecating humor and her cackling laugh.
• Jerry Lewis (1926-2017) was the American comedian known as the "King of Comedy" in America and "Le Roi du Crazy" in France; he hosted a telethon benefitting Muscular Dystrophy and appeared in over 60 motion pictures.