We’re Into It Now, Dude

For me, the wonderful thing about my interactive Daily Curling Puzzle Facebook group is that I choose a puzzle when I’m not really sure why the skip made a certain call—and then a bunch of our ‘Puzzlers’ step up to the plate and explain what’s going on. And that’s exactly what happened in this puzzle I put to the group a few weeks ago. Here it is …

Oh no. They’ve got a pile of centre guards up and we’ve got hammer. We could be in a hole here. And these boys know how to pile it on. Let’s just hope that we’ve got them on a bad day and can dig ourselves out of this mess. Here’s the situation:

C’mon skip, give us a shot that shows we know how to stop digging. What’s your pro call and club call—and why?

Our Puzzler Quote of the Day went to Don Button, who wrote “Staggered guards make me drool whatever colour they are!”

And our Player Quote went to Brad Jacobs, who exclaimed halfway through the end in which he gave up five points to Steve Laycock: “We’re into it now, dude. We’re toast.”

Members of our group make ‘pro calls’—the one they think an expert curler would make—and ‘club calls’ i.e. the ones they’d make at the recreational club level. In this puzzle, the most popular club call by a country mile was the draw behind to the four- or eight-foot rings. Personally, I can’t imagine calling anything else at the club level.

But while the club calls were one-sided, the pro calls were pretty split between a come-around draw and peel of the guards. I enjoyed Thomas Koch’s comment, “I’ve seen too many examples here in the puzzle group where centre guards hurt the team with hammer. Remove the guards …” Nice one Thomas—but maybe not in this case!

Only a rare few called a play on that red 4 (R4) out to the side, the one Laycock played. So what the heck was he up to?

The first question I have learned (through the group) to ask myself is: What’s the game and end situation? Mickey Pendergast, two-time and reigning Canadian Masters Champion, summed it up best: “Nice risk-reward situation here. Down one, so getting forced is bad, although not as bad as a steal. Sometimes we are forced to gamble, and I think this is one of those; we have shot rock above the tee, three staggered guards and we’re throwing.”

It’s only the fifth end, not one of the last few ends where a failed gamble probably means you’re going to lose the game. It’s the middle innings, and a gamble here carries less risk than it would later on.

The rock situation, as Don Button says, is mouth-watering. Staggered guards can’t be run back, so anything behind them is pretty safe for one or two shots. Yellow has one in there already and you’ll hear Brad Jacobs call down “He made a good shot” in referring to Colton Flasch’s first throw. 

(The video link below is bookmarked there, a shot earlier than the puzzle call, because it’s a great use of staggered guards and puts Brad in a real dilemma.)

My head-scratching was all about “If staggered guards are good for one of our yellows, why aren’t they good for two of our yellows?” Shouldn’t Laycock just lob another one in there? This is where our Puzzlers came in.

Here’s Don Button again: “I’m curious what people think about freezing to R4. If he freezes on top you might have a hit and roll to sit two, and possibly three if his freeze isn’t perfect.”

And Doug Woods: “Yellow could draw to the four-foot but Red could follow anything to the four-foot with a freeze limiting the scoring area. So let’s leave the guards alone, and I’m not ready to head to the four-foot yet. I like a nose hit on R4.”

How about the always excellent Adriana Camarena: “The staggered centre guards are inviting to wrap another one around to the four-foot before they do, or we can be patient and place one behind our corner guard. If we’re going for a multiple score, I like this best. We can clear the centre on our next one after we lob another one in the house … or play a tap game depending on how it’s looking …”

And the superb Hans Frauenlob, who contributes to The Curling News and who repped New Zealand at four worlds and an Olympic Winter Games: “I think I hit R4 on the nose. Sucker them into going around the centre pile and if they don’t make it great then you’ve got a three or four in the making. Accept the risk of a steal.”

What I’m taking away from this is … if we’re gambling (and Laycock is doing just that here in the fifth end), maybe it’s best to sink another safe counter in the rings somewhere (Laycock chooses the corner freeze, but maybe it could have been behind the corner guard), accept the risk of them drawing behind the staggered guards, then follow them down and sit on top (again, a safe counter with backing). 

Depending on how that all goes, one team is going to have to break cover and peel some guards and if that’s the other guys, we sink another and sit a bundle in the house ... with the hammer.

The risk of course, is that Jacobs makes a peach in behind Y2 somewhere. But there’s a good swing on both sides so Laycock should be able to get close to that one. And I bet he’s thinking that those guards can be removed by his third, Kirk Muyres, in one go … so he’s confident he can still bail out and get his single with four shots to go.

To gamble or not, by scattering a few around and daring them to go first? In this case, we’ve already seen Team Jacobs really struggling with tricky ice. If you watch the end in its entirety, you can sort of feel the Jacobs heads dropping as they struggle with shot after shot. Maybe Laycock just sensed this was the time to place a few around the rings, go for the big end and accept the risk of a force or a steal.

I started the group to use curling puzzles as a way to get better at the art of skipping, and I like to draw out some Universal Skipping Principles when I can. My USPs here are:

1. Staggered guards make me drool.

2. With one already dead-buried and with hammer, maybe it’s time to lodge another in and play for the big score.

3. With half an end and half a game yet to go, and plenty of time to recover from a gamble gone wrong, maybe that time is now.

4. Enticing them to go first around guards means we can play another one on top of theirs and lob yet one more in a good position (with half an end to play).

It’s a great end from start to finish. I hope you enjoy it.