Late January 2027. Daisy was frustrated at every turn by her failure to obtain ToC (Tournament of Champions) bids her teammates were earning, not having broken at Grapevine (Texas) and Duke (online), and only making it to the quarterfinals at Isidore Newman (all inter-state debate tournaments, the latter in New Orleans).

That last tournament marked the debut of her using what she refers to as the "speed K", or arguing that excessive speaking speed makes debating the resolution useless because the resulting speeches makes thinking critically about them impossible.

"Do you have your opening statements ready?" the male LD player asks Daisy.

"I need a total of three: one for the aff, and two for the neg" Daisy answers her Lincoln-Douglas teammate.

"Two for the neg? Why two for the neg?"

"One for use against those willing to debate in good faith, or who are otherwise unwilling to risk breaches of topicality, and the speed K for use against those who spread (spreading, in debates, consists in talking very fast to overwhelm opponents, and its adepts are called spreaders) ; most spreaders tend to be willing to commit breaches of topicality. Now, the speed kritik has its limits: we can run it only when playing to judges that have tolerance to topicality breaches, and only on the neg. We will not sacrifice our principles when playing on the aff!"

"And this season we will only get to use it at two more online tournaments, Columbia and Stanford: interstate tournaments tend to have a greater tolerance for breaches of topicality. Neither state championship will be favorable to the use of kritiks" Daisy's teammate tells her.

"I am more inclined to accept defeat if both players make an exchange of ideas in good faith and the ideas so exchanged actually make any sense. But this is just a response to nonsense. I understand that we will run it only if the opponent committed a breach of topicality"

So while our brains can process speech up to 500 words per minute, if it takes an excessive chunk of our cognitive capabilities to just make heads of the speech... we become vulnerable to information overload. Which, in turn, makes us struggle to discern whether the actual content has any coherence or logic, and therefore makes critical thinking impossible, Daisy starts running down a summary of the "speed K" in her head. She also touches upon another key point in that intelligibility is crucial to critical thinking and therefore to the proper evaluation of values and their associated criteria.

"I guess you weren't there at Nats last year, where we somehow won against the ToC champions because they were relying too much on their ability to overload the opponent with a sheer volume of arguments, sub-points and corresponding evidence, but in the regular season we always seemed to be successful only in traditional tournaments until this season's Isidore Newman came" Jarod tells the LD players.

"Exactly, Jarod. In a rush to get the most arguments out, and I'm sure some spreading adepts will say it forces them to be as concise as possible when delivering their arguments, but so do low word budgets for non-spreaders, so we're forced to attack the main points directly rather than each sub-point individually. And remember last season when we were saying these exact same things but never went around to voicing these concerns in-game. Some of these arguments might make sense on their own, but the speech often lacks logical coherence, especially on the rebuttal speeches our opponents deliver" Daisy explains herself.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"Yeah, we were able to stay afloat in inter-state tournaments because we were logically coherent, and we were able to stick to the essentials of the topic in a cogent manner" Jarod makes an additional comment.

Speaking of Isidore Newman, to us this tournament, while a bit harder than local tournaments, still feels more traditional than Grapevine or Duke, Daisy belatedly reflects on this experience when they enter a cross-examination drill, held a few days before Columbia starts.

-------------------------

On Saturday afternoon, Daisy has one game left to play, and, going into game #6, she sports a 3-2 record. Whoever wins this game will break. Here's my chance to do better than last year, win this game and actually earn my first ToC bid later, knowing that, if I do, the onus will be on me to keep performing at that level at Stanford next month, she starts thinking before the judge announces the contestants.

"On the neg we have, from, Thomas Jefferson Science and Tech, Phoebe Caufield..."

TJHSST. A school whose skins our mathletes and quiz bowlers got under for as long as I've been in high school, but I never pictured this place as a debate school, Daisy thinks upon hearing the opponent for the game.

As often ran by spreading-intensive players, 9 minutes into the game, Phoebe tends to rattle off dozens of arguments whose quality is suspect, and even going so far as to claim that failing to meet some condition would lead to nuclear war. Which leads to a juicy cross-examination for 3 minutes after the neg's opening, where Daisy picks remarks for the main arguments she just heard, starting with the most absurd:

"You claim that a new retirement plan would trigger a nuclear war. That's a big non sequitur to me" Daisy retorts.

"Implementation of retirement reforms would likely cause some Congressmen and senators to lose their seats, and those elected in their place will want to not only repeal the retirement plans, but also to implement a more aggressive foreign policy against both China and Russia" Phoebe responds to Daisy. "And then, foreign policy would provoke either one into war, then nuclear escalation"

"However, there is no guarantee that whoever will then be elected in their place will actually push for a more aggressive foreign policy, since Congressional candidates don't adhere to a single platform, even within the same party. Hence the non sequitur"

Right now, a government shutdown is more likely to happen over retirement reforms than nuclear war, and past government shutdowns didn't result in nuclear war. Why would the next one lead to nuclear war? Daisy muses, while the following remarks address other absurd arguments at the core of their absurdity. Such as the lack of consistency between the arguments and the value criteria. It's a wonder Phoebe is even 3-2 here to begin with. But better Phoebe than an opponent who will commit breaches of topicality at every turn! She remains somewhat on-topic, just distorts what it implies.

Yet Phoebe manages to keep calm despite being called out on the non sequitur regarding how the implementation of retirement reforms would lead to nuclear warfare.

But, even after taking prep time at this point of the game, with only 4 minutes to rebut a 7-minute speech delivered via spreading, Daisy has no time to address the elephant in the virtual room: just addressing the main arguments forces her to spend the whole 4 minutes, with no new arguments, much less evidence, only how existing arguments can counteract Phoebe's, and why.

Nine minutes later, the round ends and Daisy hopes the non sequiturs of the opponent are going to carry the day, while Phoebe instead hopes that the unaddressed arguments, especially the sub-points, will instead win the judge over.

When Daisy eats lunch with her mother in the dining room, immediately after the game, she checks on Tabroom for the result of the game against Phoebe:

"I made it, double-octos time!" Daisy then jumps in joy when she realizes the judgment refers to Phoebe's lack of argumentative cohesion.

"Venomous Agendas DP break to double-octos at Columbia!" Daisy then proceeds to tweet, referring to her herself as the codename on the team's depth chart. Daisy Pammant.