Gryffindor Wins the House Cup! … in Quidditch Beer Pong

We love Harry Potter. But let’s be real here, who doesn’t?

Quidditch is one of the central components of the Harry Potter world and pretty much everyone who has ever read the books has wanted to play. So much so that Muggle Quidditch is a thing now and they even have a world championship. But that’s not the only variation of Quidditch out there. For those of us who are far less athletically inclined and much more interested in booze, there is Quidditch beer pong.

Yes, Quidditch beer pong. The kids who grew up with Harry Potter are no longer sweet and innocent. They are young adults and college students who really just wanted to get plastered.

When Therese, Jane, and I saw the rules on line, you know we had to try it.

Here are the basic rules:

1. Choose what team goes first with your sorting hat!
2. If the quaffle (ping pong ball) goes through a hoop and makes it in a cup, it counts as two (much like if the ball were to bounce).
3. If the quaffle goes through a hoop, the enemy team is allowed to use their bludgers (hands) to knock it out of the way.
4. When there is one cup left, the snitch must be used. Trust me, this makes things a lot more difficult. I made my snitch by just wrapping a ball in yellow duct tape and attaching a few wings made out of paper, but you could easily use a yellow ping pong ball with glued on wings.
5. Finish off the night with the Expelliarmus shot and enjoy.

Now, we didn’t have a sorting hat. I do have one but not at school with me. What we did, instead, was have everyone take an online quiz to determine their house. Our houses actually worked out fairly well with an almost even distribution and then the few extras we had were consolidated into the Hufflepuff team. We then made a double elimination bracket and sort of decided who went first that way.

We also did not use butterbeer. Instead, we used food coloring to color beer in the house colors. (Therese did make butter beer, though, and it was amazing.) Nor did we have expelliarmus shots because we were way too lazy to make them. But we did still throw cinnamon on fire and it was awesome.

The rest of the game we played through more or less as instructed.

Jane made us a fantastic set of hoops and a snitch that surprisingly made it through almost the whole game. Instead of throwing it into the last cup we had on the table we instead put a clean cup in it’s place. That way we didn’t ruin the tissue paper wings or make the duct tape gross. The colored beer only lasted the first two rounds because after that we started putting other things in the cups (one team requested to take half shots of rum in their cups) and, honestly, we just got lazy.

We also added up points to make the whole double elimination thing work out. So each hoop was worth two points, each sans hoop shot was worth one, and the snitch was worth ten or fifteen (we never did quite agree on that). And, anyway, our math was bad and we were drunk. Because the way we played the team that ‘caught’ the snitch would always win anyway. Next time, I think we’ll make hoop shots worth three to five points and regular shots worth one or two. Just to give the other team a shot. Though, the problem with this is that it’s more complex math than drunk people should probably be doing.

While we had four teams of three and while it was fun it does drag on a bit. Beer pong is not always a fast game and in some cases (like the Gryffindor team’s) the teams waiting to play could sober up before their next round came along. So you really need to try and play through the games as fast as you can. Or you can just pick two houses instead of playing through an entire double elimination bracket House Cup.

But we were dedicated and damned if we were not going to finish that competition.

Gryffindor – led by yours truly – walked away with the ultimate victory though Slythering house – which was comprised of Therese, Jane, and their cousin Johnny – earned the most team spirit award. If, you know, we’d actually given out an award for that.

If you’re tired of regular beer pong and looking for a nerdtastic way to mix things up, Quidditch beer pong is the way to go. I highly recommend it but you do need to be committed to the game and be prepared for the long haul.

Next up: TRON beer pong… stay tuned.