[Skipbidder]

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C) 6D. I hate these sorts of problems. It's all a matter of agreements. Bridge is not a guessing contest. But I presume that partner could've shown shortness in hearts directly after 1S and since he cannot be missing cuebids in both minors, I take it as he has the goodies in hearts. My 6D is meant to be "Ok hearts, diamond-cuebid, no club-cuebid"

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Yes, partner could have shown shortage immediately over 1S. BWS is a consensus system. In effect, you are answering these questions as if you were playing in an "individual" with a BWS partner. My own preferences include multi-tiered coded splinters, where you can distinguish among strengths of splinters and between singletons and voids. This is not available in BWS. Some panelists would choose 2NT rather than an immediate splinter if they were above minimum game-forcing strength. Others would choose 2NT over a splinter if they held a stiff honor. I agree that these style issues are things that you would ideally work out with a regular partner. The jump to 4S by opener after 1S-2NT is a very awkward part of Jacoby 2NT agreement. I personally scrap it altogether, much preferring to keep 2NT as natural to maintain suit strength/length integrity for 2/1 bids. There are much more efficient methods for game-forcing raises if you are willing to live with some complexity. BWS is already much too complex for a pickup partnership, however. Woolsey echoes your complaints about the vagueness of the above-game slam try. By his thinking, 5H has to to not be concerned about controls (otherwise partner would just cuebid 5C or 5D. The 5H bid should instead be looking for a heart fit for slam. (Some other panelists thought that 5H should be showing both or neither of the minor suit controls, on general principle, and then concluded that there was no possible hand containing neither.) I chose 6H, which was the plurality choice, and scores 100. 6D scored 70 points, and was chosen by 4 panelists (Allan Graves, Brian Glubok, Larry Cohen, and Fred Stewart). This is my second choice, but it is a distant second. Woolsey on 6D: "Looking for a grand slam makes no sense. If that were North's interest, and a key-card ask were inappropriate, he would surely have bid five clubs over four spades South would always control-bid the ace of diamonds if he had it; then, North could bid either 5H to get more information or six of a minor to make his intentions clear. South's bidding six diamonds is useless and may give the opponents information. North must have the king of diamonds for his sequence to make sense, so it is a club lead to be feared the most. If West has nothing in either minor, he will lead a club if South bids six diamonds...In fact, South might think about psyching 6C to try to keep West away from that lead." Woolsey thinks that 6S is clearly better than 6D, but actually prefers 6H, as an offer to play. A bunch of heavyweight names agree with him about 6H. (By the way, Ira Rubin and Mike Kamil would have passed originally with this hand.)

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E) 3NT. OMG a toughie! 3NT is a ridicolous bid but what am I supposed to do? I cannot bring myself to pass (Mike Lawrence would) and X will almost certainly make partner bid 4H. Oh I should pass, but I can't. It's like folding AA - it's extremely hard

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Mike Lawrence wasn't on the panel this month (although he frequently is), so I can't tell you whether or not he would pass. Four of the 25 panelists did choose to pass...Carl Hudecek, Ira Rubin, Bobby Wolff, and Danny Kleinman. 3NT was the majority answer, which I also chose, worth 100 points. Howard Weinstein's comment was "Three notrump. One of the most disgusting problems ever." There were seven votes for actions that I consider offbeat. Three doubles, three 3D bids, and one 4S bid (from Marshall Miles, who actually does this sort of thing in practice). Woolsey prefers the double, fully aware that he might get buried in hearts.

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F) 3H+X. Easy. 3H is an overbid but there's really no other choice. X I suppose is take-out. Now we'll play the right suit, maybe a bit too high [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

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Double originally would be takeout, and is the action I chose, followed by 4H. This was in fact the plurality choice, but was overruled by Woolsey using his director's discretion. That plan got 90 points. 100 points was awarded to 3H followed by passing out 4C, which was chosen by 6 panelists. I think that this is a lapse of partnership discipline, as this should be forcing. Director Woolsey is the only current director who is willing to pass in systemically forcing situations, although he does not favor 3H then pass here. I don't care for his scoring choice. (Never mind that he downgraded my plan in the process...) Your plan to bid 3H and then double was chosen only by Debbie Rosenberg, who tries it only because she feels she must respect the force and is trying to get out with any plus score. If 3H created a force to at least 4H, which is the view of most of the panel, then they would treat your double as penalty rather than as takeout or convertable values. Four panelists chose 3H then 4D. Two chose 3H then 4H. Perhaps Woolsey decided to score 3H vs. double as an initial choice, then to score within each choice. That would explain the scoring without considering it a director's override. Your plan of 3H followed by double gets 70 points.

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G) PASS. I don't expect a bravery medal for this, but seriously? Unless RHO is a total LAG, he'll have a billion spades. At IMP I'm not going for a possible 200 with the risk of losing 730. 3NT is tempting but where's my source of tricks? 5D just seems too far away

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I'll have to go back and look at the hand that I posted.
I hope it was
A3
AKQ62
---
AJ7653
with partner opening 3D and RHO overcalling 3S, both vulnerable at IMPs.

11 panelists chose 4C, the 100 point answer.
6 panelists picked 4H (my choice, and worth 80 points).
6 votes for (penalty) double, which scares the hell out of me, but is Woolsey's choice.
Nobody voted for pass, 3NT, or 4D. You get 10 points.

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And btw: According to the text beneath the four problems I already answered, you only scored 350. But you also wrote that I'm trailing by 10. Which is it? [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

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I probably made a math error. I did this very quickly. I'll go back and add it up and recheck that I posted the correct problem for problem G.

On this set of four problems, you scored 70, 100, 70, 10, for a total of 250. I scored 370 on these four problems.