Diane, a bridge player from Wilmington, North Carolina, asks about sitting with the bathtub, a phrase her friend uses for a lopsided game where one pair keeps getting the good cards. The phrase appears in newspaper columns about bridge starting in the late 1940s and later becomes associated with the games of euchre and pinochle. Sitting with the bathtub plays on bridge’s directional partnerships—north-south and east-west—and jokingly suggests that aligning oneself with the bathroom down the hall or even with the floorboards and their grain might bring good luck. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “What “Sitting with the Bathtub” Means in Bridge, Euchre, and Pinochle”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Diane from Wilmington, North Carolina.
Hey Diane, we’re glad to have you.
What are you calling us about today?
Well, I’m a bridge player, and I have an expression one of my friends uses that I’m hoping you can tell me how it came to be.
When it’s a one-sided game with one pair getting all the good cards, The explanation is you must be sitting with the bathtub.
I had never heard this before, so, of course, I googled.
And AI says it’s a superstition that originated in the Midwest but had no further insight.
And my friend Helen from New Hampshire speculated that it stemmed from a time when people had a bathtub in their kitchen, but that doesn’t really explain what it has to do with getting winning cards.
Well, I’m glad you didn’t trust AI and called us instead because it can definitely lead you astray.
And I’m interested in the construction of that phrase.
So it’s not sitting in the bathtub.
This person has clothes on and they’re sitting with it.
Is that right?
Yes.
Sitting with it, as in, you know, sitting parallel, I guess, with the side of the bathtub.
-huh.
Yeah, this is, you know, it kind of pops up, Diane, out of the blue in the late 1940s.
And it starts to show up in the bridge columns of newspapers.
Remember when you could actually read about the Car King Bridge in the newspaper?
It was a thing.
Yes, back in the day.
Yeah.
And, and it’s immediately associated with bridge, but also later becomes associated with euchre and even peanutle.
And it connects with these North, South, East, West descriptions in Bridge.
In that game, North, South and East, West refer to your relationship with the player who you’re playing with, right?
Your partner.
Correct.
Yeah.
And so, and a lot of the mentions of sitting with the bathtub, and there’s other phrasings for this, but they talk about being aligned north, south or east, west.
So people will, would apparently after a while, in a joking fashion, almost always not taking it very seriously, try to position themselves or the table so they and their partner were aligned with wherever the bathroom was anywhere in the house.
And it wasn’t from the time when people were likely to have bathtubs in the same room they were playing cars.
I mean, they could have, but just wasn’t likely.
Right.
And sometimes you’ll see people not talk about aligning with the bathtub being parallel with the bathtub, but with the floorboards or the grain of the floorboards.
And so after the late nineteen forties, it starts to show up almost always as a little joking aside and rule books and collections of folklore, and it never really gets fully explained.
And I have never seen anyone explain why you want to be in line with the bathtub except, like a lot of games, card games tend to have a lot of folklore associated with them.
Like these superstitions, which nobody really admits to believing, but you do the needful anyway just in case.
Bridge has always intimidated the heck out of me.
I’m really impressed that you do it.
Yeah.
I’m glad to see it’s still thriving.
You know, it’s kind of peaked.
It had its heyday, but I know that there are communities of people who still love to play, and it still requires a great deal of teamwork and mental vigor.
Oh, definitely.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
No, it is a fun game, and it’s a challenging game.
But, I’ll have to just pay attention to whether I’m sitting with the bathtub from now on.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That’s what we know.
Thank you, Diane.
We really appreciate it.
Pass that on to your team.
Okay.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Bye bye.
Bye bye.
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