Did you guys know that Dartmouth has lots of frats, and that these frats like to be really fratty? OK, to a certain extent this is global knowledge, but we've allowed Dartmouth's Ben O'Donnell to describe for us the touchstone of their fratty rep: the Big Green's version of pong. Try it out this weekend. Learn from our friends in the woods.

See if you can spot the SAT analogy: CEOs: Golf. Robots: Chess. Egyptians: Egyptian Ratscrew. And Dartmouth students? Pong.

Pong. It is not "beer pong" (as if there were any other kind!) It is a game, sure, and a drinking game, more specifically. But it is  so much more. It is a skill set, a spectator sport, a study break, a snack, a kingmaker, a heartbreaker, a bonding activity, an intensity reliever, an intensity furnace, a pick-up line, a date, as much obsession as fun, bet-you-can't-play-just-one experience.

To your typical non-Dartmouth Hard Lemonade/Smirnoff Ice aficionado, however, pong can seem counterintuitive, unsanitary and egregiously alcoholic. It forces the consumption of Keystone Light, which tastes like a higher-quality malted beverage distilled in the bowels of a homeless person. But to understand pong is to understand us, so here it is: The Sparknotes version of our most unofficial collegiate pastime.

After the jump: the rules in full. 

Where does pong happen?

Though occasionally played in the dorm rooms of the super-coolest freshmen who happen to have a five-by-eight to five-by-ten foot wooden table, pong almost always takes place in the basements of Dartmouth's Greek houses.

What do you need for pong?

• Tables: Depending on the size of the basement, there are as few as two or as many as six tables set up in a given house. Tables are often painted. At fraternities, the design scheme typically features something awesome and old-school, like maybe a knight in full armor riding a flaming motorcycle while crushing a beer can on his helmet. At sororities, it's usually some crap about sisterhood, perhaps a transvestite Cat in the Hat having a pillow fight with Sam I Am or something (Dr. Seuss was an alum!!!)
• Balls: Ping-pong, three-star. Anything less is a felony.
• Paddles: Wooden and faced with sandpaper on each side, and the handles are broken off before use. Paddles are held the way you'd pick up a melon, so a backhand shot requires a twist of the wrist.
• Cups: Clear, Dixie, twelve-ounce.

I'm just trying to get hammered -- what about the DRINKING?!?!

Jesus, I'm getting to that. If it's a liquid, you can probably play pong with it. Keystone Light, locally priced at $12.99 for thirty "stones," has proved popular for pong. Indeed, a rumor has it that Dartmouth accounts for 1% of our great nation's Keystone consumption. Often water or juice can be substituted for beer, but this is frowned upon at many houses because, come on. I have also heard of other variants of pong utilizing anything from champagne ("champong") to delicious soup.

Can you tell me how to play and then show me your CD collection up in your bedroom?

I would be happy to, incoming freshman female who is unaware that this is the basic formula by which all frat guys get handjobs during Orientation!

Four players stand around the table, one at each corner. One player ("Doug") serves the ball cross-court so that it bounces once on each side of the table. The player diagonally opposite of Doug ("Mike") then returns the serve. If the ball strikes the table, Doug's partner, "Idan," hits it back to the other side, and the next player to hit will be Mike's partner ("Mystery"). If the ball hits a cup (a "hit) in Doug and Idan's formation, however, one of them drinks half of the contents of the cup. If it sinks into a cup (a "sink"), they each drink half and throw the empty cup on the floor in disgust, for pledges to clean up later.

All shots, including the serves, must arc the ball so that it reaches the shoulder height of the shortest player (here, Idan). If the ball hits a cup formation and bounces off it, the defending team has an opportunity to "save" it, by returning it to the hitter's side of the table. Game play progresses until Mike and Mystery have lost all their cups. Mystery attributes the loss to the other team's insistence on hitting the ball kind of low. Mike offers that at least they did not lose to girls. Game over, and a new team steps up to challenge Doug and Idan…

So here's 311's Transistor, followed by Country Grammar by Nelly. Some of my bros give me shit for having so many Cher CDs but hey, I'm totally a sensitive guy. I mean, I could look into your eyes forever listening to my favorite mix of Guster's slow-songs... like those screensavers where you keep going and going through the maze and never get to the end...

Varieties of pong

The formations of cups on each side of the table are really what make pong as much a form of creative expression as of heedless binge drinking. Most are unimaginative, but a few reflect real ingenuity.

• Two-cup: Only two players, two cups per player. Cups are drained and refilled and score is kept on a points scale. A great game for people who have only one friend.
• Shrub: The most ubiquitous formation. Seven cups, five-and-a-half beers. Cups are arranged in a triangle: a row of three as the base, then a row of two, then of one. A one-cup "stem" sits behind the row of three. Played by sorority girls, once-a-month drinkers, and the type of people who surreptitiously pour their beer out under the table instead of drinking it.
• Tree: Just like Shrub, but with eleven cups and seven-and-a-half beers. The triangle has a base of four cups, then three, etc. At some houses, trees have two stems. Played by members of our so-called athletic teams and people who prefer to regurgitate than digest their dinners.
• Line: Just like Shrub, if the shrub were flat and horizontal. Eight or nine cups, depending on the house rules. Played by people who find simple shapes difficult.

There are many, many other incarnations of this game, past and present. The exhaustive Wikipedia article details some of the present ones, while this article (from whence the photo) traces pong's shadowy origins.

In the heavyweight category, perhaps the most ambitious type of pong is called Kallmann Tree, and it calls for fifty-three cups of beer on each side of the table in the shape of a giant mutant tree. Wikipedia, however, briefly notes some monstrosity known as "Table," in which the entire table is covered with cups of beer.

Etiquette and idiosyncrasies

Life comes at us naked; we must clothe it with meaning and order. If pong is life after 10 p.m. (and on some special nights also naked or, at very least, involving a player who goes for the old "take your balls out and put them on the table" method of flustering the opposition), it follows that we must clothe it similarly. Here are some of the more piquant intangibles of custom and decorum that give meaning and order to our pong universe.

It is the responsibility of a victorious team to "keep the line" of teams waiting to "get on table" straight. "Next" means a team waiting in the wings will play after the present game finishes. "Doubles" is the following game. If a player arbitrarily feels that his team was jettisoned from its primo spot in the line, he should try to remedy this by loudly proclaiming how he's been in line for six hours and it's fucking bullshit that he can't even get on table in his own fucking house.

Beirut is at least as stigmatized as child pornography at Dartmouth. It is played at one house, in a dark and shady side room of the basement, by sad and furtive people.

There are many mythical penalties for getting shut out in a game of pong -- when the other team defeats you while preserving its entire "Golden Tree" or "Golden Shrub." Some houses require the hapless losers to drink from ladles or Frisbees filled with beer, while others mandate streaking. However, a game of Tree especially, which usually runs half an hour or more, is almost impossible to fuck up that badly. And if you do, it is often punishment enough to have let down your team, your house, your school, your parents who tried so hard to raise you well, and your ancestors who left the familiarity of the shtetl back in Russia with just the humble clothes on their backs so that you might someday have a better life in America.

If you keep winning at pong, you stay on table and beer accumulates in your stomach. It is acceptable, and even encouraged, to step away from the table and vomit ("boot") into a nearby trashcan or onto a nearby floor. Now you can return to the game ("rally") and hold more beer in your tummy! For added expediency, you can also just urinate in place, under the table. Or on yourself.

A successful hit or sink is usually celebrated with a simple fist pound between teammates. At some houses, the celebration can entail a combination of paddles slapping each other and the table, hugs or other forms of groping, and obscure gang signs. This type of display is tacky and overstated.

There is no "water cup."

--BEN O'DONNELL