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Of U.S. College slang origin, the noun beer-pong designates any of various drinking games in which players attempt to throw or hit table-tennis balls into cups of beer, which must then be drunk by an opponent.
This noun is composed of the noun beer and of the second element of the noun ping-pong.
The earliest occurrences of the noun beer-pong that I have found are as follows, in chronological order:
1-: From the following letter, published in The New York Times (New York City, New York, USA) of Sunday 23rd April 1972 [Sports section, page 6, column 2]:
Mail: About Beer-Pong
To the Editor: I am a Dartmouth College senior and, along with a few of my friends, would like to know what the world’s record is for the longest game of beer‐pong. Maybe a word of explanation is necessary.
Beer‐pong is played on a regular ping‐pong table with the same equipment, but with one addition—a cup of beer is included. In a singles match, one beer is placed in the middle of the table on each side, approximately 10 inches from the back edge. In doubles, there are two beers on each side, 10 inches from the back edge, but in front of each player. The game is played by trying to hit the opponent’s cup, and if done, he must drink from the beer.
A double fault or hitting the opposite cup on the serve forces the server to drink. We usually play five drinks to a cup, with the winner staying on the table to play challengers. What evolves many times is a great time had by all for a very long time. Therefore, a few of us thought to enter competition and try to set an endurance record for the longest beer-pong game.
We would like to know if there is such a record, and exactly what rules and regulations we would have to follow in order to try to break it. We would like to try for the record by early June of this year, so a quick response would be appreciated.
TED LIPPMAN 33 N. Main St. Hanover, N. H. 03755
2-: From the following editorial, published in the Valley News (West Lebanon, New Hampshire, USA) of Wednesday 26th April 1972 [page 4, column 2]:
Beer-Pong And Peace
The burning student activism of 1968 hasn’t really developed this election year and we’ve been wondering why. […]
[…] Well, sometimes one has to look far afield for the answer to difficult questions like this. The secret may finally have been revealed, however, in a letter buried in the sports section of Sunday’s New York Times.
Ted Lippman, a Dartmouth senior, wrote the sports editor because he and his friends would like to know—are you ready for this?—what the world’s record is for the longest game of beer-pong. Not PING-pong; BEER-pong.
[…]
Lippman’s letter doesn’t really tell us why students aren’t active in politics, unless we assume, by inference, that they’ve gone beyond all that, to more serious considerations.
But it tells us much about the way they think. For example, why this obsession with the rules and regulations? In our day—about halfway between goldfish-swallowing and the twist—beer-pong was simply called ping-pong, and was played with a regulation paddle in one hand and a beer can in the other. Switching hands was allowed. None of this waiting for your opponent to hit a cup and take a regulated sip.
Nor did we care about world records, or even about who won, for that matter, as much of the fun came from drinking beer.
Now, years too late, we learn—not from the Chinese, who recently invented ping-pong, but from a college student at Dartmouth—how revisionist we were, how debauched, how uncouth.
An office wag insists the letter goes a long way towards explaining Dartmouth’s less-than-spectacular Ivy League ranking, but we prefer to look on the brighter side.
Maybe the Dartmouth boys have a point. Maybe this is the way to real peace. International matches could be staged, changing only the name and the contents of the cup: sake-pong, vodka-pong and so on.
3-: From Activities Abound In Orlando Area For Singles Wanting Busy Holiday, published in the Sentinel Star (Orlando, Florida, USA) of Thursday 23rd December 1976 [page 2—D, column 4]:
MORE EXCLUSIVELY social are the adult apartment complexes such as Century 21 Apartments, 2250 N. Semoran Blvd., Grove Park Apartments, 5325 Curry Ford Road, Sandy Cove Apartments at Altamonte Springs, and Americana Apartments in southwest Orlando.
Activities at Century 21 are fairly typical. There are bloody mary [sic] brunches on Sundays, live bands for dancing Saturday nights, organized bus trips to such places as St. Augustine, a game called “beer pong” Wednesday nights. Anyone can take part, but there’s a $1 charge for nonresidents.
4-: From There’s more to sports than meets the eye, by Brian Schmitz, published in the Sentinel Star (Orlando, Florida, USA) of Sunday 31st July 1977 [page 3—D, columns 1 & 6]:
Sports to most people means basketball, baseball, football, softball, golf and tennis. But not to all people.
Some have their own sports. Their sports seldom make the newspaper.
What about checkers, chess, horseshoe pitching, beer pong, roque and bridge to name a few.
These are also games people play. These are their sports.
[…]
YOU CAN USUALLY tell who the loser of a friendly ping pong game is at Century 21 Apartments. He’s the one loaded to the gills. Winners stay sober longer, but after a while every player starts seeing pink elephants and beautiful girls.
This is “beer pong,” and the object quite simply, is to get your opponents or opponent flat-out smashed.
It’s regular ping pong only there is no slamming or cut shots, except on the serve.
Two plastic cups filled with beer are placed on each end of the table. Hit the opponent’s cup below the rim and he has to take a drink. You score one point.
A “rimmer” counts two points and the opponent(s) must take three sips. Now a coveted dunk, when the ball kerplunks into the beer, means the opposition must drink whatever they have left and fill up again. That’s five points.
When you lose a game, you must fill up the winner’s glass(es) as a “courtesy.”
“OF COURSE you play to win, but it’s mostly a game of control, knocking the ball toward the cup,” said ardent beer pong player Tim Ward, a 27-year-old premium auditor. Ward says Mike Rix, a 26-year-old insurance agent, brought the game to the complex.
Huge Dave Bouck, 26, a former lineman at Tennessee, 32-year-old lawyer John Harris and Don Mahula, 24, a Navy lieutenant, and Rix usually man the tables.
The group even brought one of the apartment complexes tables to the Daytona 500 auto race and to the beach. When the social director ruled against bringing the table along anywhere else, they up and bought a new one.
“We call it a sport,” chuckled Ward, who holds the SBPA (World Beer Pong, of course) singles record of seven dunks in one game. “We’ve invited other complexes to play and we just had a tournament.”
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