Interpreting your partner's opening lead

Greenwich residents who turned in fine performances during the past week at one of the two White Plains duplicate clubs offering face-to-face play were:

The Bridge Deck: Nov. 11, Faye Marino, third in Strat A. Nov. 16, Linda Otness, second in A; Mary Scarfi-Lois Spagna, tied for third in B.

The Harte’s Club: Nov. 16, Kathryn Payne, second in A.

Today’s quiz: Here is another in the current series of quizzes on interpreting our partner’s opening lead. In the following problem, you are given the bidding, your partner’s lead, and your own and the dummy’s holding in the suit led, accompanied by five card combinations your partner might hold.

Taking all the available information into account, which of the combinations do you think partner might be leading from? (More than one of the choices may be correct.)

The bidding: Opponent —1H; Partner — Pass; Opponent — 2H; You — Pass; Opponent — 4H; all pass.

Partner leads the SK (your partnership leads the king from a suit headed by the ace-king). Dummy has 983 and you have 1074. Partner could hold: a) KQ65 b) AKQ62 c) KQJ652 d)K e) AK2

Answer: The king is the proper lead from each of the holdings given, but b), c) and d) can be eliminated because they would be inconsistent with the bidding. If partner held either b) or c), he would surely have overcalled with one spade (or possibly two spades with c) after the one heart opening on his right). And if he held d), it would mean that the declarer had a concealed six-card spade suit headed by the AQJ, no less. (For this reason, even a doubleton king holding for partner would be highly unlikely, as this would mean that declarer had five spades headed by the AQJ.)

Partner could have a) or e), however, both of which are possible on the bidding since partner could not overcall with either holding and declarer could certainly have three or four spades.