[aguahombre]

Attributing the blame, to me, is not about scoring various elements of a gymnastic performance. The 1NT overcall would garner no style points, but on this deal it might have been the only away to achieve a decent result.

If South had stuck to his choice, and North had signed off in his longer suit; there would be no blame (perhaps even gaining IMPs via "fix" because of the "inspired" but theoretically very wrong 1NT overcall).

So, North to blame for the strain and South to blame for the level. 2S made it impossible to play in the known 8+ fit, so the board was doomed at that point. South's continuations might have been more egregious, and compounded the doom; but doom was already there.

[Vampyr]

P_Marlowe, on 2013-November-06, 05:40, said:

Hi,

I hate 2S the most.
1 NT is not my cup of coffee, but at least you have the strength, and the honors
distributed, and a semi balanced shape, so ok.

But starting with the 5 carder, led to ending up in the 52 instead of the 62 fit
was due to the 2S bid.

With kind regards
Marlowe

Quite. Sometimes blame accrues not to the bid(s) that directly led to the insane final contract, but the one that made it very unlikely that a reasonable spot would be reached (regardless of what happens afterwards), and that bid was 2♠. For example, if the auction had continued (as expected) all pass, 2♠would have been a break-even or worse contract. So I give 100% of the blame to North; a truly awful bid with no upside cannot be partially let off the hook because the bidder or other people made worse bids afterwards. Of course South gets 100% too.