"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 (2024)

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 asBeirut, is adrinking gamein which players throw aping pongball across a table with the intent of landing the ball in a cup ofbeeron 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 originalbeer pong played with paddleswhich is generally regarded to have had its origins within the fraternities ofDartmouth Collegein 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 actualping ponggame with a net and one or more cups of beer on each side of the table.Eventually, a version withoutpaddleswas invented and the namesBeer PongandBeirutwere adopted in some areas of the United States sometime in the 1980s.In some places,Beer Pongrefers to the version of the game with paddles, andBeirutto the version without. //Bucknell University's student-run newspaper,The Bucknellian, claimsDelta Upsilonfraternity members at Bucknell created "Throw Pong", a game very similar to beer pong, during the 1970s,and that "Throw Pong" was then brought toLehigh Universityby 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 inThe Daily Princetonian, the student newspaper atPrinceton University, suggested that the name was possibly coined at Bucknell or Lehigh University around the time of theLebanese Civil War.Beirut, the capital ofLebanon, was the scene of much fighting during the war, particularlymortarfire. (wikipedia)

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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 basem*nt 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."

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 co*cktail drinker; co*cktails, 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.