This is aHand:

A rapid and high-level auction leaves you defending a contract with no real idea of who has what.

Can you Read the Lead and come up with a helpful and accurate defense?

The bidding is exciting and a little unexpected. After North has Passed and East has opened 1♣ you try the effect of bidding your eight-card suit at the four-level, reasonably confident that it will buy the auction. Not a bit of it. West emerges with an unexpected effort of 5♦ and that ends the bidding. Having made the opponents guess at the five-level it would be poor bridge by you to battle on further with 5♥.

Another piece of unexpected play comes with partner’s lead. Expecting a Heart lead you see that partner has put the ♣4 on the table. What is going on?

The only reason we can surmise for North to lead dummy’s suit is that he has a singleton Club. Note also that the ♣4 is the lowest Club partner can have. That proclaims an honor under normal circumstances but here he can’t have one. This is conclusive evidence, Dr Watson, of North having led a singleton.

Well, if West has solid trumps he will simply draw trumps and run off dummy’s Clubs. However, what if North gets on lead. What do we want him to do – and how can we tell him that?

When you ask the right questions it is easier to get the right answers. Here you should follow suit at trick one with the ♣J. This can’t be an encouraging signal – what would be the point of encouraging partner with the ♣A K Q 10 on table? The only other possibility is that it is a suit-preference signal for Spades (the higher ranking of Hearts and Spades).

Here, the tactic works like a dream. Partner takes the ♦K at trick two as declarer finesses. Back comes a Spade (partner was paying attention to your signals!) and you give partner a Club ruff.

Declarer spreads his cards and claims for one off. A Heart shift from partner at trick three, you may note, would have made West’s life easy.