[Wackojack]

The 1 spade bid was alerted and explained as showing 2 or 3 spades

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Partner leads 6♥ to your Jack and declarers King, who plays a 6♣ to Ace, partner following with the 4.
Dummy plays 2♦ you Q to declarers Ace, who next plays the J♦ to your K. Partner follows with the 7 and 8 in turn. Your lead?

I woodenly returned a heart and declarer wrapped up 9 tricks. These were my thoughts later:

If partner had been leading from ♥KQx6x then a heart return will defeat the contract. Assuming partner has faithfully given me count signals in ♦ and ♣, this gives declarer ♠??, ♥Axx,♦AJx,♣KQ10xx, Her bid indicates about 19 points perhaps a good 18. So she has one stop in spades perhaps Ax or AJ at the most. If this were the case would she try and grab a diamond hoping that we didn’t cash our heart tricks or would she not hopefully cash her club winners first and hope that partner either mis-discards a heart under pressure or there is some end play?

Partner’s count signals give him 4 spades, so is it possible that you can take 4 spade tricks? Give partner ♠ AQxx, ♥ Q1086x, ♦ 87, ♣ 64 and that gives declarer ♠Jx ♥AKx,♦AJxx, KQ10xx.

Is this not a more likely scenario? Here declarer needs to get a second diamond trick (9 tricks) before we find the spade switch.

So there is clear evidence that I should switch to a spade.

We could play methods that would have made it easier in this instance.

Smith Peters Partner’s play in the ♦s then indicates the like or dislike of the heart continuation. Since we play reverse count it would be logical to agree reverse Smith Peter’s. So partner would play the 7 then 8 with ♥KQ, and 8 then 7 if leading from just the Q♥. This would have given me a clear signal for what suit to return.

Rosenkranz double Had we played that a raise in the suit denies a top honour, then partner might have led a spade without 2 top ♥ honours.

Double of 2 or 3 card spade shows 4 spades So I double to show 4 spades (and perhaps denying a top ♥) Then again partner is encouraged to lead a spade with better high cards in this suit.

Any comments on these thought?

[quiddity]

edit, nm
Declarer's club play was pretty terrible. If s/he had led a club to the jack it would have been much harder to work out.
As far as the Rosenkranz double goes, I guess it gives partner a chance to find the spade lead but it could easily be right to lead a heart anyway and use the AQ as entries to set up and cash the long hearts.
For the double-showing-four-spades, say you doubled and declarer jumped in NT as before. Are you happy that partner is leading spades from god-knows-what into your Kxxx or are you wishing you had raised hearts?

[gszes]

opening lead preference is highly effective and rarely requires a discard in situations
where there is doubt about continuing the opening lead. assuming you can read the
4 as low (only the first suit played if p is not required to play an honor and is expected
to have some length. That would be all the clue you need to make a spade switch as
your only hope. Forget the others too risky the preference idea carries virtually zero
risk and gives a lot of information.

[FrancesHinden]

Declarer played a club to the jack at trick 2, not to the ace.
(Unless somehow this exactly auction and result was duplicated at other tables with the only different being the club play...)