> made a query to X.Y.Z.T, it recursed If it recursed, then X.Y.Z.T gave you the final response. It doesn't tell you how it arrived at that final response, and

> made a query to X.Y.Z.T, it recursed If it recursed, then X.Y.Z.T gave you the final response. It doesn't tell you how it arrived at that final response, and it might not even know (it only saves the final response in the cache). The output of dig +trace is the steps a recursive resolver would have to follow if it started from scratch (with a cold cache).