How we score

Debates: points won from the opponent's faults

Each fault one side commits is a point for the other. Higher total wins.

Interviews: strike rate

In an interview only one side is attacking. The interviewer picks every topic and every line of attack; the guest only has to survive. Counting hits alone would hide how many attacks missed, so interviews are scored per attempt: every substantive proposition the interviewer puts is marked landed, held, backfired or unresolved. The interviewer carries the burden, so the miss rate is theirs alone.

What doesn't score

• An unchallenged assertion. If nobody pressed it, nothing was defeated.
• A free admission. Volunteering something damning, at no cost, isn't a concession. You can't win what the other side hands you.
• Who someone is. A person's character doesn't make their claims true or false. Attacking the person instead of the argument is a foul against the attacker, scored the same whoever does it.
• The interviewer's stated aim. Hosts often open by saying what they want to expose. That isn't the motion; scoring it would let one side write the exam.
• Fallacy-spotting for its own sake. A fallacy only counts if it did work in the argument.

The checks every card passes

• Swap test. Re-scored with the speaker labels swapped. If the verdict flips, the scoring was tracking style, not substance, and the card isn't published.
• Charity line. Every judgement call is tested against the question: what would this be if the other speaker had said it?
• Directional check. If the close calls all fall one way, that's a thumb on the scale, and those rows are re-derived.
• Column audit. Every fault type is looked for on both sides, not just the side it was first noticed on.
• Framing test. Re-scored under each fair reading of the motion. If the winner changes, the card says so.