Recorded history of Beer Die reaches back to the early 1980s, when frats at Colby College in Maine sat behind closed doors and played, according to the official Beer Die site. Brownie’s Beer Die Open (BBDO) commissioner Jay Brown said he once met a Colby alum, who affirmed he was playing as early as 1978, coincidentally the year the BBDO commish was born. Yet neither the official site nor Brown himself can confirm when this drinking game first began. Many accounts conflict on the Internet as the sitting-down version spreads west across the country.

It’s reached at least as far as the Lone Star State.

This reporter “tweeted” the hash tag #BeerDie, on the popular social networking site Twitter, and struck a chord all the way in Corpus Christi, Texas…

…then again, that’s Beer Die sitting down. Everybody, who plays South Shore Beer Die, stand up.