I find some hands very interesting and this is one of them. I played the 7, it worked badly, I later thought I should have played the 4, I went home and got Stewart's book out and found a similar hand, and so on. I'll say more at the risk of sounding obsessive.
I'll start with a little more about Stewart's example hand. Actually Stewart borrowed the hand from Woolsey, and his comment is worth reproducing [I think I will easily be on the proper side of copyright laws here]: "This hand is drawn from Partnership Defense in Bridge by Kit Woolsey,the best treatment of defensive signals available. When this book appeared in 1980, I thought it was the most important work in defensive play since Hugh Kelsey's Killing Defense was published in 1966." That's quite a tribute. I have Woolsey's book but it has been a while since I have looked at it. I do like both his writing and his approach.
Anyway, here is the Woolsey/Stewart example hand:
Dummy
Q75
AT94
K82
T73
Third hand
J96
K73
J65
AJ82
The auction is 1NT-3NT, the
2 is led, dummy plays the Q, and Stewart/Woolsey say, "you signal with the 9".
So I need to think more about this. A few pages back Stewart has a hand where a 6 is led, dummy plays the 6 from J92, and the recommended play for third hand, holding only spots, is a count signal. This seems to be the dividing point: Count when dummy has and plays the J, attitude (possession of the J) when dummy has and plays the Q. But as Stewart also notes: "Not all attitude situations admit to such an easy interpretation".
In the case at hand I am confident that I will be getting the lead before partner does. Moreover, when I then lead the J he will play me for three cards since if I held four cards I would presumably have led back my original fourth best. I cannot be certain whether partner's lead is from 4 or 5 cards but 4 is more likely, giving declarer four. It' not so much that I can think out the full problem exactly, but definitely I don't want partner, after
JKA3, to play the T hoping to drop my non-existent 9.
The play went
to the Q,
to the A,
to the T, I am in. I lead the
J to the K and A and partner is in. If I had played the
4 at T1 partner still would not know whether that was from J74 or J94, but at least the 4 might have slowed him down. Declarer holds the
K else she probably has the J (she has to have something somewhere) and would have played a small club to the J, even if it lost hearts could not be continued by E. I gave count in clubs, declarer must have been dealt a 3=4=3=3 shape since with four diamonds she would have opened 1
and with four spades she would have raised spades. But now it is looking strongly like I have the
Q. Partner can reason that even if playing the
T drops the 9 we get three hearts and one diamond. If we are going to beat this I need to have the
Q. But also, declarer could have started on spades instead of diamonds had she held Qxx. It's one of those choice things. If she lacks the
Q she has not choice put to play on diamonds, if she has the
Q she could go for her 9th trick in either spades or diamonds. But it's more than that. Imagine she has the
Q. Say she comes to hand with a club and leads the
Q. If E holds the K and covers, she could duck. She has now established 9 tricks, E cannot continue hearts, and if spades break she gets a 10th trick. So it seems likely she would play that way if she had the
Q. In fact, had she held the
Q she might well have led low toward it from the board at T2. Why come to hand if when she leads the Q she pans to play low whether or not the Q is covered? Even if I have the Kxx in
there is a non-trivial chance that I won't rise. Doing so establishes three spade tricks for her and so could be wrong at least at matchpoints.
So I think pard might well have decided that there was no hurry to cash the
T had I played the 4 at T1. Playing the 7 convinced him that there was no reason to wait. he could just cash the hearts.
Coda: Amusingly, in the Woolsey/Stewart hand the original signal is in spades, but the key is in clubs. Declarer comes to hand in diamonds and leads a heart to the Q and East's K. To beat the hand, E shifts to the
J, something of a super-surrounding play since W holds K94.
Having borrowed from Stewart and from Woolsey via Stewart I might mention that I recommend both of these authors.
Added: I just dug out the Woolsey book. Yep, it's a good book. It's old, but we senior citizens do not always consider that a defect.