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It's easy to make seven diamonds on this deal if you peek at the opposing hands. All you have to do is to avoid taking a club finesse through East, losing to the doubleton queen.

But if you're declarer and can't see the East-West cards, the task is much more difficult. There is a way, however, for declarer to discover — without using mirrors — that West has the Q-x of clubs.

West leads a trump, and South notes that the only possible loser is a club. There are two obvious ways of avoiding the club loser: If the missing hearts are divided 3-3, declarer can discard a club on dummy's fourth heart, or, failing that, he can hope to find East with the queen of clubs, in which case finessing the jack will succeed.

There is no need to explore either possibility at once, so South wins the trump lead, ruffs a spade high in dummy, returns to his hand with a trump, ruffs another spade high, then leads all his trumps, producing this position:

Declarer now cashes the K-Q-A of hearts. When West shows out, South learns that East has the jack of hearts among his last three cards.

Declarer then leads the A-8 of clubs, East following low to both. It would be foolish to finesse the jack at this point, because East's one remaining card is known to be the jack of hearts. So South goes up with the king of clubs and catches West's queen to make the grand slam.