Author: Matt Liu, University of Wyoming Director of Debate Cross-x is one of my favorite and one of the most important parts of debate, so I have a lot to say about it. This cross-x skills post is broken up into three posts. The first part provided an overview of the purpose of cross-x and types of questions. The theory of cross-x provided there is useful to understand this post, which will break down specific tips for upping your cross-x game. This post will focus on the 5 most important big picture lessons for cross-x. The final post in this series will deal with more specific and particular tips. If you read just one post in this series, I would make it this one. 1. Argue, don’t ask. Argumentative questions should make up the vast majority of your cross-x. They are high utility, in that they serve a significant purpose. Argumentative questions get air time for your arguments. They allow you to let your best arguments hang in the judge’s mind. That can help save time in your later speeches by explaining difficult concepts early. Even with simple ideas, you’re buying yourself time for later. When an argument is explained in cross-x, it takes less time to explain that argument in a later speech. This doesn’t mean saying the often clunky line “that was in cross-x,” it means that you’ve already done the difficult work of explaining an important argument so that the judge already implicitly understands it. Thinking of putting together a cross-x in terms of putting together argumentative questions also makes prepping for cross-x easier: the function of cross-x becomes a preview of the best and most important arguments you were already planning on making later. (That includes reading the un-underlined, size 4 portions of your opponent’s evidence and looking for weaknesses, of course!) I can better explain what an argumentative question is by explaining what it isn’t: it’s not an open-ended question. For example, think about CX’ing a Yemen stability advantage. An open-ended question is: “how do you solve Yemen stability?” An argumentative question is: “even if the plan successfully ended Saudi involvement in the war, wouldn’t the total destruction of Yemen’s infrastructure and the ongoing civil war between internal factions mean instability would continue?” Think about cross-x like a tally chart in the judge’s mind. The first question puts zero tallies in your column, but if your opponent responds “there are 3 reasons we solve Yemen stability, first…” then they’re putting up 3 potential different unique warrants to answer your question- that’s three tallies for them. The argumentative question, however, puts up 2 tallies for you (because there’s 2 warrants for why the aff doesn’t solve Yemen war just by ending Saudi involvement, infrastructure and civil war). Another benefit of argumentative questions is they constrain your opponent’s answer. Everyone wants to use questions as a jumping off point to talk about what they actually want to talk about. Open-ended questions give your opponent more room to pivot to their talking points. Argumentative questions constrain their ability to make leaps like that, because if they leave an argumentative warrant unanswered you’ll have “won” that portion of cross-x (and it’s dangerous to leave the judge believing your opponent is ahead on an issue). The pie chart above is a bit of a jest- there’s no one ideal cross-x strategy that will work perfectly every time. The point is that argumentative questions should make up the vast majority of your cross-x.
2. Don’t beat a dead horse After debaters learn “argue, don’t ask” the number one mistake I see is in pacing. Debaters will get stuck on a question, usually because their opponent refuses to agree with them. This is a mistake that forgets the purpose of cross-x: it’s about the judge, not your opponents. You can’t convince your opponent anything (it’s their job to disagree with you!) but you can use cross-x to communicate to the judge and get air time for your arguments. The question you should ask is: “how long does it take the judge to understand the argument I’m making with this question.” The answer is usually we understand it before you’ve finished asking the question. Everything after the judge understands the point of your question is useless to you, strategically. It’s diminishing marginal utility: asking the same question twice does nothing for you because it provides no new information to the judge. In fact, it might even hurt you: the more chances you give your opponent to answer the same question, the better their answer will get. I’ve seen some epic stumbles in cross-x turn into big saves because the cross-x-er didn’t move on after a win. That’s why your goal should be asking 9 unique argumentative questions during your cross-x. It’s an ambitious goal. Setting it is more important than completing it because it will drive you to up your pace and ensure you ask several argumentative questions. It will ensure a better outcome than the all-too-common CXes where I see just 2-3 questions asked. Think about how many arguments per minute you make in a constructive or rebuttal. Is it more than 1 argument per minute? Of course it is! So your CXes should have more than 1 argument per minute as well. You want a diverse set of argumentative questions. Now, if your opponent has a smart, well-developed response to your question, that’s a different situation. Answers that advance the conversation should be responded to. Remember, you don’t want to look like you’re losing an issue in cross-x. The difference is whether you are making a new argument to respond to their verbal parry. If you’re just advancing your original argument again, we’re back to diminishing marginal utility. If the conversation has gone to the next level and you’re making a new argument, that’s fine. The optimal move in this situation is to respond and move on: “no, and.” Rebut their argument and move on to your next question so you can keep your pace up and hit a lot of different high-utility questions. Most debaters need to up the pace of their cross-x. However, there are a few that dominate podium time too much: the debaters who constantly interrupt their opponents and don’t let them get a word in edge-wise. Please don’t be misled by my “more questions good” argument to believe that means you don’t need to let your opponent talk. If you’re constantly talking over your opponent in cross-x, the message you are sending is that your arguments cannot hold up to the scrutiny of an actual answer. And I don’t trust arguments that you’re not willing to subject to rigorous scrutiny. There’s an art to balance in cross-x, and it’s not actually that complicated. You get one real chance to answer the question. If you fail, you are not owed a second chance, the CXer can move on. If you have not given your opponent a real chance to answer your question (including the real amount of time necessary), you should not move on. 3. Have a written list of questions If you are about to give a cross-x, you are about to give a speech. That means you should prepare for your speech by writing down what you plan to say. I see way too many ‘need a Twix’ moments (“uhhh… uhmmmmm”) because someone has forgotten what they wanted their next question to be or because they have forgotten how they wanted to word their question. Write your questions down, in detail. Cross-x is a speech, which means if you’re about to give one you’ve only got two jobs: flow, and get ready for cross-x. If those are the only things you’re doing, you’ll have plenty of time to get ready for cross-x. You should have a sheet of paper for cross-x questions. Don’t type your questions, you might need to use your computer to glance at a piece of evidence during cross-x, and you always want to be able to see your list of questions (also, a sheet of paper is easier to hold and move around with than a laptop). 4. Prioritize You shouldn’t just ask your cross-x questions in the order that you thought of them (and wrote them down). You should have a mission in cross-x, a plan: priorities. You need to be ready to radically reorganize your questions as you think of better questions and questions that get at the heart of the debate. What does that look like? It means writing “1” next to your most important question, then scratching it out and replacing it with “2” because you came up with a better, more important question (and so on, an so forth, all the way down to "9"). Note: some of the wording in this section will be specific to policy, but the general ideas should be useful to all. What’s important is what will matter at the end of the debate. Most things you talk about in a debate won’t be in the 2NR and 2AR: big parts of the debate are going to fall away. You want to make your cross-x count by focusing on the issues that matter the most. This means avoid easy wins. Did your opponent make an argument so bad you know you can crush it and look great doing it? You can do that in your next constructive or rebuttal. CX time is too valuable to waste on something you already know you’re going to win. Use CX to tackle the hard issues, the important issues, and the places where you’re behind (so you can mount a comeback). Cross-x’ing the important issues also means don’t re-cross-x the case. The CX of the 1AC and only the CX of the 1AC should be about the case (the one possible exception is in a one-off K debate, where the case debate often matters as much or more than the K). Your priority should be reading their evidence, especially the un-underlined, size 4 portions. If you’ve read or cut their evidence, particularly solvency, to read against them, CX is a powerful time to get the “your author concludes neg on alt causes” (etc) debate started. Solvency and internal links are more important, but impacts are easy. If your well is running dry on CX questions for a new aff, attack the impacts. The CX of the 1NC should focus on the off-case positions you believe are most likely to be in the 2NR. Does this team have an overwhelming penchant for going for politics? Spend 2m 15s on the politics DA, or more. Is this a team that reads a diverse 1NC, but always goes for the K? Spend your time on the K. Is there a tricky new DA specific to your aff? Well, they’re probably going for that, focus your CX time there. Adapt to your opponents: what are their general proclivities? What stands out as a good argument vs your aff in their 1NC? Does something look tricky or like it was prepared especially for your aff, like a well-developed CP? All those things should guide where you cross-x. The CX of the 2AC should be on what you want to go for in the 2NR. A good rule of thumb is that the CX of the 2NC should be on what you plan on taking in the 1NR, since the 1NR should have the most important negative offense in most debates. An effective CX of the 2AC should add 3 minutes to the 1NR. A laser-like focus on the off-case you want to win the debate on allows you to dismantle the 2AC arguments one by one (in order of strategic priority, not in the order they were made). The CX of the 2AC should never CX an off-case position you’re not extending in the block- that’s wasted time. The CX of the 2NC should dismantle what you think is most likely to be in the 2NR, with a focus on offense (DAs, case turns, etc, over case defense, but counterplans over case). Smart 2Ns obstruct this goal by giving the most important arguments to the 1N, blocking the aff from adding a 3 minute speech against the 2NR. Cross-x strategies against the K should vary, but if framework is in the 2NC that's a good place to start. A cross-x on how the perm resolves specific links is also often useful. For example, on the college topic (cooperation in space with adversaries), many affs claim to solve space debris which would destroy satellites. In response, many K links say "satellites are bad because they're used to support capitalist and military objectives." That is a link argument about why the way satellites are used is bad, not why satellites themselves are bad. A smart 2A will point out that the combination of the plan and the alternative (the perm) reorganizes society so satellites will not be used that way- the bad parts go away, but satellites still have potentially good uses (the net benefit to the perm). This is a good CX because it make an argument about how the perm (using the specific language of the alternative) resolves a specific link- not "the link" in general. 5. Cross-x is a crystal ball to predict your opponent’s plans If you’ve hung in so far, you know that a good cross-x should be (1) argumentative, and (2) focused on the most important issues in the debate. Therefore, if your opponent is good at cross-x, that means they’re going to tell you exactly what they want to do and say in the 2A/NR during cross-x. You should take advantage of that and start prepping answers to this right away. (Note: this isn’t a reason to avoid CX’ing the most important issues, the pay-off is way too high. There might be a cost, but it’s worth it- you just need to learn how to take advantage of the cost on the other side) When I say right away, I mean right away! I think the biggest mistake I made as a debater was procrastinating figuring out how to respond to arguments that I was behind on when I was getting CX’ed. The instinct makes sense: there’s definitely competing time pressures that seem more important. If someone beats you on an argument in CX, it might be awhile before you hear that argument again, and in the meantime there’s other things you have to do. That might seem right, but it’s wrong. If someone beats you on an argument in CX, you’re almost certainly going to hear it again later, it’s probably important, and you don’t have an answer. How do I know you don’t have an answer? You just got beat in CX. Delaying dedicating time and energy to think about how you’ll answer that argument just puts off the inevitable till a moment when you’ll be even busier. Have a sheet of paper with you when you’re getting CX’ed, and if they’ve got a good question, write it down. You need to start blocking out answers to that argument ASAP. The next post in our CX skills series will address some specific do's and don'ts of cross-x. Do you have a topic you’d like us to address in a future post? Email us at [email protected] Go Pokes!
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