johnu, on 2018-December-28, 19:03, said:
Some people will know you started with Puppet Stayman and didn't credit the original authors. Others who have no idea there was a method to query for 5 card majors won't know any of the history. They will look a little silly and confused if they don't know what they are playing is really Puppet Stayman with some modifications.
I would have started out by acknowledging that opener's responses to 2♣ come directly from Kit Woolsey's Puppet Stayman articles. Also, responder's 2♥, 2♠, and 2NT after a 2♦ rebid by opener come directly from Woolsey's articles. And Woolsey describes Smolen convention type bids for responder's rebids past 2NT.
As I mentioned, my full document starts off by comparing several Stayman conventions and crediting their originators and publishers, including Puppet Stayman and Kit Woolsey of course. It also reminds the reader that Punch is a Puppet, for anyone who had any doubts
![:)](https://www.bridgebase.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
But to avoid any ambiguity I added a phrase to this stub document acknowledging that those initial bids coincide with Puppet Stayman over 1NT.
It wouldn't be true for me to state that I took those initial responses and rebids directly from Kit's articles, which I had not read at the time I designed the convention. It all started almost two years ago when partner suggested we start opening 5-card major in 1NT and we wanted a Stayman to match, just like the OP in that recent thread. I saw 5-card major Stayman and wasn't impressed, then found a description of Puppet Stayman over 1NT in bridgehands.com and was underwhelmed by that too - it had opener responding 2NT with no 4 or 5 card major, analogous to Puppet Stayman over 2NT, which we already played at the time. So it seemed like fun to see if we could create something that did more what we wanted, and maybe also eliminate some jumping around between Stayman and transfers with major two-suits of various strengths, and pick up that elusive 3-5 fit between opener and responder. I had seen on vugraph some people using just three initial responses to 2
♣ asking for a 5 card major, and that seemed an obligatory choice if we want to maintain some garbage capability and minimise disclosure of opener's hand. For the rebids over 2
♦, using 2
♥ and 2
♠ to indicate the other major was something already familiar from Puppet over 2NT and again seemed an obligatory choice if we want to avoid wrong-siding the contract. 2NT was originally a natural invite with no further interest in majors, but it soon emerged that 3
♣ for 4-4 majors was not workable with opener in misfit and at minimum, so somebody suggested playing 2NT as 4-4 and putting the natural invite through 2
♥, which also freed up a bid to continue to differentiate between 4-4 FG and 5-5 despite the introduction of transfers to both minors. Since then the base of the convention has been unchanged.
I only came across Kit's actual conventions over 1NT at the end of last year when I sat down to write an introduction for other partners. That the initial responses and rebids were identical was no real surprise, there is only so much you can do with the three bids between 2
♣ and 2NT. I read that Kit and Steve first played it after just five minutes of discussion.