The Curious Incident by Foxymoron

"To misbid a hand is a misfortune, but to misdefend it as well looks like carelessness", might have been an Oscar Wilde quote if he played bridge. He did play cards, and would have disapproved of the current spate of online cheating episodes. "One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards" was one of his more astute observations,

On this hand, we both misbid and misdefended. We did have winning cards, but did not use them properly:

Mike and Carrie Eden were the beneficiaries. I thought I had a normal 1S overcall of a strong club, but I think showing a two-suiter would have been better. We play that one-level overcalls are natural, somewhat avant garde I know, but as Vampyr pointed out, I might only have ♠KQxx and not much else. I am vulnerable, however, and I would have raised to 4S on East's hand. Instead she made a fit-jump of 3D, and when South bid 4H, I passed as I thought I had good defence. I would still have bid 4S on the East hand - it is a thirty-point pack.

I kicked off with the king of spades, on which East showed four spades, and continued with another high spade and South ruffed, and led the ace and queen of hearts. I won, continued with another spade and South ruffed and drew the remaining trumps. East had to guess on the last of these whether to keep three diamonds and three clubs or to keep four clubs and two diamonds. She "guessed" wrong and the game came home. I was quite pleased to get 10% on the board, which shows that only 9 out of 10 cats bid and defended the hand correctly.

How should East reason? Well, Conan Doyle might say:
Gregory:  Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?
Holmes: To the curious incident of the switch to a singleton diamond at trick two.
Gregory: There was no diamond switch at trick two.
Holmes: That was the curious incident.

So, West surely has two diamonds and East should keep four clubs and the game will fail. Of course, West could have a diamond void, and South might have AJxx of diamonds and AK doubleton of clubs. Surely West would have bid Four Spades himself if that were the layout. Defeating Four Hearts would have been worth a solid 60%. Why is that? Well a couple of declarers in Four Spades ruffed the heart lead and drew trumps. Now the defence had four tricks. You need to play on diamonds before drawing all the trumps. Good to see Roly, Jenny and Gerry make the doubled game with correct technique!