Partner navigates with a signal

John Burnside, a Scottish author and poet, said, “I’m interested in the way language is used to navigate the world around us.”

When defending at the bridge table, quite often one defender will have the lead, not sure which way to turn. Then he has to hope that his partner has been able to send a suitable signal.

In this deal, how should the play go in six hearts doubled after West leads his singleton diamond?

West considered immediately overcalling four spades. If he had, presumably North would have responded five hearts, and East would have advanced with five spades. Then who knows what South would have done? Based on the actual auction, I guess he would have bid six hearts, getting us back to where we came in.

West, confident that one opponent was void in spades, led his diamond. East won with the king and cashed the ace. What did West discard?

West wanted East to lead a third diamond, to promote his heart queen as a trick. He thought about an esoteric spade king, but eventually chose the spade three. This ought to have worked, but for some strange reason East thought it was a suit-preference signal for clubs! Now declarer could have escaped for down one, but not noticing the club nine and not realizing dummy’s eight was high, he ended up going down two anyway. That was a 68 percent score for East-west (and plus 100 would not have been much worse).

West resolved next time to discard the spade 10 as suit-preference for diamonds!