"To recap," in an initialism / TUE 7-30-24 / Fashion brand founded by an Australian surfer / Uber- relative / Use non-lead pipes? / Actor who plays Luther Stickell in the "Mission: Impossible" franchise

Constructor: Jeffrey Martinovic and Will Nediger

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: RSVPING (60A: Acknowledging and invitation ... or a hint to the starts of 19-, 32-, 39- and 49-Across) — the letters R, S, V and P precede "-ING" in the first word of each theme answer; so the puzzle itself is RSVPING, in a way; it's "R"ing, then it's "S"ing, then it's "V"ing, then it's "P"ing ... (!)

Theme answers:

• RING ANNOUNCER (19A: "And in this corner..." speaker)
• SING BACK-UP (32A: Use non-lead pipes?)
• VING RHAMES (39A: Actor who plays Luther Stickell in the "Mission: Impossible" franchise)
• PING-PONG BALLS (49A: Projectiles tossed into cups of beer, in a drinking game)

Word of the Day: Beer pong (the "drinking game" in the clue for PING-PONG BALLS) —

Beer pong, also known as Beirut, is a drinking game in which players throw a ping pong ball across a table with the intent of landing the ball in a cup of beer on the other end. The game typically consists of opposing teams of two or more players per side with 6 or 10 cups set up in a triangle formation on each side. Each team then takes turns attempting to throw ping-pong balls into the opponent's cups. If the team "makes" a cup - that is, the ball lands in it, and stays in it - the contents of the cup are consumed by the other team and the cup is removed from the table. The first team to eliminate all of the opponent's cups is the winner. [...] The game was originally believed to have evolved from the original beer pong played with paddles which is generally regarded to have had its origins within the fraternities of Dartmouth College in the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s, where it has since become part of the social culture of the campus. The original version resembled an actual ping pong game with a net and one or more cups of beer on each side of the table. Eventually, a version without paddles was invented and the names Beer Pong and Beirut were adopted in some areas of the United States sometime in the 1980s. In some places, Beer Pong refers to the version of the game with paddles, and Beirut to the version without. // Bucknell University's student-run newspaper, The Bucknellian, claims Delta Upsilon fraternity members at Bucknell created "Throw Pong", a game very similar to beer pong, during the 1970s, and that "Throw Pong" was then brought to Lehigh University by fraternity brothers who visited Bucknell and this led to the creation of the version of beer pong that is played today. // The origin of the name "Beirut" is disputed. A 2004 op-ed article in The Daily Princetonian, the student newspaper at Princeton University, suggested that the name was possibly coined at Bucknell or Lehigh University around the time of the Lebanese Civil War. Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, was the scene of much fighting during the war, particularly mortar fire. (wikipedia)

• • •

Easy but not boring, with a revealer that does what it's supposed to do—reveal, in a surprising way. I could see the "-ING" repetition but thought "that is not a theme, what are we even doing here?" And then I hit RSVPING and had a sincere "ohhhhhhhh, OK" moment. It's silly, but it works, and I don't know that I want anything more out of my Tuesday revealer than that. It's R'ing, it's S'ing, it's V'ing, it's P'ing, it's here it's there it's everywhere, ing ing ing, ding ding ding, great. And if the RING and SING answers aren't *that* exciting, the SING and VING answers make up for it. Well, let's start with the VING answer, because it seems like there *aren't* any other VING answers besides this one. I don't know if VING RHAMES was the inspiration for this puzzle, but he's certainly the person you can't make this puzzle without. The necessary ingredient. I assume he's a household name by now—I've known his name for three decades, ever since his Extremely Memorable performance as Marcellus in Pulp Fiction (1994). The plot with him and Bruce Willis is extremely violent (Rhames tries to kill Bruce Willis, but then they both get taken hostage in the basement of a pawn shop ... very bad things happen ...), but what I remember most about his performance in that movie is the back of his neck. The first time you see him, the camera is trained on the back of his very thick neck and bald head for a very long time, as he sits at a table in a bar. Makes him seem very cool and imposing. His neck has a band-aid on it, which apparently inspired a ton of fan theories ("the devil takes your soul from the back of your neck" "he cut himself shaving" etc.). 

I rewatched the movie recently, which is to say I sat next to two guys (one right next to me, another one row up) who were both watching the movie on an airplane, and so I kept jumping back and forth between screens, watching the movie without sound. It's amazing how much I didn't need sound. It all came back. Great movie. VING RHAMES is also fantastic in one of the other great crime films of the '90s: Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight (1998), where he plays George Clooney's longtime partner in crime (the crime being heists, mostly banks). Apparently, he's also in the Mission: Impossible franchise. That, I'm less familiar with. But I didn't need the clue today: I no-looked his name just from letters I already had in place (I tend to work short crosses before I ever even look at longer answers). As I say, not many things start with "VING."

The other themer I enjoyed was SING BACK-UP. It's an original answer *and* it has a wicked trick (32A: Use non-lead pipes?)—one of the only challenging moments of the puzzle. Not the element lead, as the clue implies, but "lead" as in "lead singer," and not "pipes" as in plumbing but "pipes" as a metaphor for one's singing voice. Late-week trickery on a Tuesday. I like it. So, as for the theme—it was too thin ... until it wasn't. Revealer to the rescue. I wonder why they went with PING PONG BALLS and not PING PONG TABLE. Is "BALLS" just an inherently funnier word? I think I just answered my own question. There's something about the BALLS portion of this grid that is both messy and interesting. A pile-up of consonants and odd letter juxtapositions, with RSVP running through NHLMVP (44D: Hart Memorial Trophy recipient, for short) running through THX (48A: Text of appreciation), with the odd "XL" in OXLIP (45D: Yellow primrose) and the odd "-SI" ending on TARSI (48D: Ankle bones), all with the very smooth and original AIR MILES running through it. Like it or not, it's got character, that corner. Does it also have BALLS? Well, literally, yes. You can see that.

If I look at my Mac keyboard ... well, actually, it's a wireless keyboard, not the one on my actual Mac (laptop). I was gonna say, if I look at my keyboard, I see "ALT" printed just above "option," so I can see easily that they're the same key. But the key on my actual laptop just says "option." This is all to say I could've guessed ALT (1A: Option : Mac :: ___ : PC), but I cheated and looked down, just to be sure. Is Voodoo Ranger a known beer!!? (4A: Voodoo Ranger, e.g., for short). I got IPA easily from crosses but remember thinking "what the hell is that?" (as you know, I'm more a cocktail drinker; cocktails, wine, beer, in that order (order of preference, obviously, not order of consumption, that would be ... a lot)). Interesting clue on TL;DR today (3D: "To recap," in an initialism). I first knew the initialism as a dismissive comment made in response to some other commenter's longwindedness (it stands for "too long; didn't read," after all). It was created to ridicule, but has apparently morphed into a more neutral summing-up term. Language is funny. 

Bullets:

• 6D: Soprano Netrebko (ANNA) — kind of a big deal. She is a Russian who made some comments at the start of the Ukraine invasion that got her into trouble. They don't seem terribly controversial, tbh (she condemned the war but thought artists should be allowed to be apolitical and not be forced to speak out against their homeland), but the blowback was harsh. Performances were canceled, etc. Then she opposed the war more clearly and forcefully and was denounced as a traitor by Russia. I am just now discovering that "Netrebko made a cameo appearance as herself in the 2004 film The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement" (wikipedia), so having recently waded into the whole Princess Diaries universe (one week ago today), I may have to check this one out. It still has Julie Andrews, right? OK, good. I own one Netrebko album and while I'm no opera expert, I think she sounds sensational.

• 51D: Brooklyn squad (NETS) — I hesitated at -ETS, but I'm not sure why. The NETS are in Brooklyn, the METS are in Queens, and the JETS ... I dunno, New Jersey somewhere, I think. Those, Ladies and Gentlemen, are your New York -ETS!
• 42A: Uber- relative (MEGA) — really should've taken that dash into consideration. I didn't write in LYFT here, but I definitely considered it.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]