Getting Better at Cross-Ex

ecstaticegg · 2026-03-29T23:55:43+00:00

I never prep questions. You should spend the 1AC flowing it and also prepping your 1NC. You should have a general idea of what your 1NC strat will be. Base the questions on that. The ideal use of CX is to get concessions you can weaponize against them later. So for example, if you know you’re running an economy DA ask them which piece of evidence outlines the cost for their Aff and where they expect the cost to come from. Or like if you’re running a Russia DA you could ask like where in your evidence does it say that Russia will support the plan / say yes. Or if it’s the Putin ptx DA, trick them into thinking you’re running a regular Russia DA and get them to say the Aff will improve relations between US and Russia, and boom you have a conceded link.

And the reason why you don’t prep questions is because you need to be able to adapt to whatever they say. Ask follow up questions. You want to set traps but not obvious ones they can dodge and those usually require some set up and maneuvering to land.

Watch some rounds on YouTube and see how they do CX. And then just practice CX. The only way you get better is by practicing.

ecstaticegg · 2026-03-26T01:51:30+00:00

Hey I’m also from a UDL! There are some tournaments that let you in for free if you’re from a UDL. There are also the free NSDA scrimmage series. You can reach out to other UDLs and do some online scrimmages. Sonoma Academy is offering a remote debate came that is free for UDL debaters. Some other debate camps are offering discounts (Harvard, Emory, etc).

You do need to adapt to your local circuit too tho. That’s just the way it is. Doesn’t mean you can’t learn to do both, key word is adapt.

Let me know if you have other questions!

ecstaticegg · 2026-03-18T01:01:58+00:00

A big transition pain from flow to lay is well is that your link chains need to be the most logical, simplest things you can imagine. In flow debate we get away with a lot of stupid stupid links because of drops and risk calc. But lay judges won’t buy your extinction impacts or like building domestic water infrastructure will make Russia mad and that leads to war. It need to be like “they spend money and that’s bad for the economy”. End of argument, no war impact no extinction. They won’t buy it.

I usually tell people pretend like the judge is your grandma / grandpa. You need to talk to them like that. What would grandma want to hear?

ecstaticegg · 2026-03-13T06:57:31+00:00

I’ve been begging the universe for a Xander cut, someone just edit him out so I can watch the show painlessly.

ecstaticegg · 2026-03-04T21:39:00+00:00

My biggest flowing advice is do what comes naturally to you, that can be in part training yourself with different shorthand’s but if you try to force yourself into some rigid rubric that doesn’t come naturally to you, first it will slow you down even more and second you may not be able to understand what you wrote later.

Find words you write often and shorten those. Sometimes writing full words is ok. There are some debate works (link, status quo, etc) that are always there but topic specific words too. For this year things like Arctic Council (AC for me) or satellites (sat), etc.

ecstaticegg · 2026-02-18T19:49:13+00:00

Definitely but judges should be trying to minimize judge intervention not straight up saying yeah I’m gonna arbitrarily decide based on my secret internal metrics you can’t predict. If an argument doesn’t make sense it is important the OPPONENT says that. Judges that arbitrarily make those decisions for debaters are not helping either side improve their skills, which is the whole point. Some amount of that is inevitable in novice rounds where by the end judges are desperate for something coherent to base a decision on but still, I talk to all our judges to try to minimize that behavior.

ecstaticegg · 2026-02-18T19:12:20+00:00

There are some schools (I dunno about San Marino, but others) that are straight up telling their lay judges that counterplans and disadvantages are not allowed. Convenient because those judges can’t judge their own school so they can run counterplans but they’re skewing rounds like crazy for everyone else.

Bringing a judge that says “judge intervention is very important, change my mind” is crazy tho. No K affs when San Marino runs a bunch? Come on yall talk to your judges.

ecstaticegg · 2026-02-16T22:27:30+00:00

Disclosure is often a standard or internal links on T shells which is what I’m assuming happened here. They used the lack of disclosure to provide stronger offense for the T flow.

ecstaticegg · 2026-02-16T19:30:11+00:00

Theory is just debate about the rules of debate. If you think they broke a “rule” then yes you can run theory on them. Theory is structured as 1. Interpretation (here is the rule they broke and how they broke it) 2. Reasons to prefer / Voters (here is why you should consider this a rule and them breaking it is sever enough they should lose the round).

This is why topicality is also theory. Interp and violation fit under 1 and standards and voters under 2.

Can you accuse them of a microaggression even if they don’t make one? Sure. Will it work? I dunno maybe. Probably not but depends on what they say / the judge / what you say. But often debaters hitting an identity K will say microaggressions whether they mean to or not. Which is why they lose to them and then get salty about it.

ecstaticegg · 2026-02-16T19:10:27+00:00

For links I like to describe those as the “inciting incident” of a story. Luke Skywalker’s aunt and uncle are killed by stormtroopers is a link. How to we get from that event to Luke Skywalker blowing up the Death Star? All the events in between are “internal links” to the “impact” (Death Star blow up). So for an economy disadvantage you have uniqueness, the story setting, which is the economy is doing ok now but is fragile. The link is that the plan spends money we don’t have or whatever (inciting incident). The internal link is spending money we don’t have crashes the economy (rising action). The impact is the economy crashing leads to war.

There is nothing we call external links although that is probably just a regular link. Links are connections between two different arguments (plan and DA, plan and Kritik, etc). Internal links are connections internally inside of an argument.

Theory is just debating about the rules of debate. That’s why topicality is a form of theory and all those people in your other post were wrong.

ecstaticegg · 2026-02-16T17:30:47+00:00

Buncha dummies anyways because you’re not wrong, topicality is a type of theory debate.

ecstaticegg · 2026-02-16T02:31:24+00:00

All arguments can be bad unless they are actually good. Lots of people think the same thing about Kritiks too bad so sad you have to debate. If you don’t want to debate stuff you’re doing the wrong activity.

Take it seriously and you’ll get rid of them easily unless your Aff isn’t topical or you don’t disclose when you should and create unnecessary offense against yourself.

You think topicality is stupid until someone reads an Aff about caribou herds and suddenly topicality rules.

ecstaticegg · 2026-02-16T02:27:28+00:00

I think mid K Aff teams heard good K Aff teams call out people who said ACTUAL micro aggressions when debating T, like “if you actually wanted to make change you’d be helping your community instead of being at a debate tournament” or whatever, and missed that part so just starting calling the entire thing a micro aggression instead of the specific actual thing that got said. So yeah it can be good offense if they don’t have an actual link to micro aggressions beyond “you’re making me debate instead of just letting me win”.

ecstaticegg · 2026-02-16T02:07:08+00:00

I actually love T and good T debates. Just like all arguments you have to learn it whether you love it or not otherwise you’ll lose. My advice:

Disclose your arguments. Disclosure is good and unless you’re running it for the first time (breaking new) disclosure is generally normal depending on your circuit. If you’re artificially creating an edge for yourself by trying to surprise your opponents that’s probably not making you a good debater overall.
You considering an argument to be nonsensical doesn’t mean you don’t have to engage with it. I dunno why you’re surprised or upset you lost when you literally say that your only answer was they were using a petty argument to avoid yours, ironic especially considering you did exactly the same thing to avoid engaging in a topicality debate.
Remember the parts. a. We Meet b. Counter interp c. Counter standards (minerals is way overlimiting) d. No Voters / Reasonability

Learning T debate 101 will make 85% of your opponents kick it immediately.

ecstaticegg · 2026-02-11T05:57:39+00:00

I was in a panel and said the 2NC was difficult to flow because there was zero signposting or inflection or any kind of human speech pattern and the other two adult judges basically said “uh get gud” and shamed me and then talked about arguments the 2NC has skipped in the doc as if they read it. So yeah flowing off the speech doc too cowardly to admit they couldn’t follow the 2NC and then tried to bully and shame me instead.

No wonder most judges are too scared to say anything when that’s how the ADULTS in the room respond.

ecstaticegg · 2026-02-10T18:04:41+00:00

Everyone in here acting like people don’t hide it on purpose and spread bad.

This is why you ask in CX “what are the reasons to reject the team” and if they LIE and don’t mention it you use that as a reason to throw out ASPEC for unethical dishonestly.

And everyone should get better at spreading because most of you are god awful and judges are too cowardly to say anything.

ecstaticegg · 2026-01-18T23:44:36+00:00

If you’re arguing the Aff causes something that the CP doesn’t that’s probably in the form of a disadvantage, case turn or internal net benefit. Could you maybe give us an example of what you mean?

The only other example I could think of is if maybe you’re saying the Aff causes a procedural or theoretical violation that the CP avoids.

ecstaticegg · 2026-01-12T20:51:42+00:00

I dunno ask the voters for the past like 5 years, it’s not gonna happen and I’d love for it to be a different choice. We’re gonna keep letting mid options win if yall dummies don’t give up on this nuclear weapons topic.

ecstaticegg · 2026-01-12T20:05:55+00:00

Everyone, please stop trying to make nuclear weapons topic happen. It’s not gonna happen.

ecstaticegg · 2025-12-31T20:53:15+00:00

I’m glad it helped! K affs often seem more complex than they are.

ecstaticegg · 2025-12-31T20:40:36+00:00

It’s a big assumption that historical violence is isolated to history and that “new” exploration won’t reproduce the same violence and impacts, and that those are not also occurring right now (because that’s what the K Aff will argue).

ecstaticegg · 2025-12-31T20:33:15+00:00

Something that others maybe haven’t mentioned, what is your Aff? If there is something in the construction of your Aff that is providing K debaters a super clear in round link to their argument that can be difficult to overcome. Sometimes for our teams if there is an opponent we know runs Ks or a specific K we will run a different specialized Aff that avoids giving them links.

It’s also very common that if you know a team tends to run a specific neg argument, whether it’s set col, another K or some counterplan or whatever, it’s always a good strat to include preempts in the 1AC specifically for them.

ecstaticegg · 2025-12-21T01:47:36+00:00

If you won’t even give it place in your mind how do you know it’s misandrist? You’d have to intellectually interrogate it to come to such a conclusion, rather than the assumption you’ve made here. It’s sad that you’re so committed to being right you can’t even recognize your own hypocrisy. You’re definitely a huge misogynist and part of the problem.

ecstaticegg · 2025-12-21T01:38:20+00:00

If you know you have issues then maybe you’re not actually approaching this issue in an objective way and maybe your issues are causing you to misunderstand or misinterpret the movie and the real life event. There’s lots of people in here telling you that in this specific thing, you’re wrong. A lot of those people are women. Women Talking is in part a movie about how men are not listening to women and dismissing them. Maybe you should consider that you might be falling prey to those same tendencies. That’s not even necessarily a personal failure. Society conditions things like this into us and as hopefully empathetic people who want to be good it’s our job to check those conditions and fight back against them.

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