One thing I haven’t seen mentioned yet: IIRC, whenever one team is shooting, there will be one sweeper from the opposite team in the scoring zone. He can sweep/not sweep in order to mess up the trajectory of the stone if he can.
You can only sweep opposing rocks behind the T-line, though, so back half of the house only.
This was what Jim said when I read the title of this thread to him - “Chess on ice!” 
I’m reading parts of this thread to my husband who curls twice a week, and he added this to what the skip does - he has to make his last shots for his team to win. He says, “If a skip doesn’t make his shot, you lose.” He also says if you can’t put a rock on the button at will, you shouldn’t be skipping. (He also calls the skip "the fat guy with the broom. 
)
Anyone can throw a guard; when you need to throw a nuclear missile, you need to throw HARD. Women often can’t throw hard enough for big take-out weight.
ETA: Not arguing with you; just adding to the weight discussion.
If you’re in America:
http://www.nbcolympics.com/tv-listings/zone=CT/sport=CU/index.html
A cursory search shows that curling has quite a few attractive ladies. You know, if you’re interested in that sorta thing… 
That aside, I’m looking forward to watching it a bit this week. The explanations here make the sport sound a lot more interesting than I first thought.
You’re welcome! We aim to please.
On re-reading my post, there are two things I think I should clarify.
When I said that the teams always throw in the same order, I meant that the members of the team throw in the same order. However, as Leaffan points out, which team throws first and which throws last will change, depending on which one scored in the last end.
Throwing last is called “having the hammer”, and it’s one of the major strategic considerations. If neither team scores in an end, then there’s no change, and the team with the hammer keeps it for the next end.
If your team is winning by a couple of points, and you have the hammer, it’s best to try to prevent any score at all in that end, to keep the hammer. So the skip will call shots to take-out any rocks in the rings, leading to a “blank end”.
“Coming home” means that the game is in the last end. “Having the hammer coming home” means that your skip shoots last in the last end of the game. In a close game, that advantage may mean the difference between winning and losing the game.
The other point to clarify is sweeping by the skip. When I said that the Skip doesn’t sweep, I meant that the Skip normally doesn’t sweep the rock when it’s coming down the sheet, but once it’s in the house, the Skip will often sweep it.
I would respectfully disagree with this statement. The rocks weigh between 38 to 44 pounds. It’s not just the movement of the arm that gives them the momentum. The thrower’s slide down the ice also does it - they push off with their non-sliding foot at the same time as they bring the rock to the ice, to combine the momentum of their body with the momentum of the rock. That’s why the players slide, rather than just throw from a stationary position. It takes a fair bit of effort to do, but once you have the technique it’s easy.
In fact, there’s even a rule for under-thrown rocks. A rock must pass the first line leading into the house, known as the hog line. If a rock doesn’t pass the hog line, it’s a hog-shot and is removed from play.
The rule normally only comes into play in recreational curling, where a player might make that sort of mistake. The hogged rock is usually the cause of a bit of merriment from their team-mates. (Unless the Skip is a control freak, at which point you get icy silence.) At the competitive level, it’s very rare to see a hog-shot, given the skill of the players. The one thing that I can think that might cause it at the competitive level is the rock hitting a bit of grit that the sweepers missed, which might slow it down enough to hog it.
Wiki has two very good articles about curling, for anyone who wants more detail:
There’s the main article on Curling, and a Glossary of Curling.
Oh, and about the score-board. It’s made of two rows, sort of like a baseball score-board. I don’t know if they do it at the Olympics, but here in Canada, they put up a card with a picture of a hammer on it on the row of the team that currently has the hammer. That way you can see it at a glance, since it’s a pretty important piece of information to understand the strategy in a particular end.
If a team that doesn’t have the hammer scores points, you might hear the commentators say that the team “stole the end”. That terminology gives an indication of how important the hammer is.
When you first start playing, it is very tough to keep from throwing it through the house. You have to work at it. Yes you can be short.
For anyone who wants to play at home, a free flash curling game that’s pretty much as good as the curling in Nagano Winter Olympics '98 for the Playstation.
Maybe someone knows of a better one?
CMC fnord!
Round robin starts tomorrow! I just printed out the schedule on NBC.com.
There was an little incident in the Women’s Canada-Swiss match the other night that illustrated the curling ethos of sportsmanship and self-governing that Leaffan refers to.
The Swiss were sitting three, with shot rock (i.e. - they had three rocks in the house, one of them being closest to the button, and therefore counting).
The Canadian Skip called for a double-takeout (i.e. - she signalled to her Third who was about to shoot that she wanted the Third to throw her stone to hit two of the Swiss stones out of the rings). A double-takeout is a hard shot to call and make, but not unusual at the level of competitive curling.
The Canadian Third threw her rock, and did it so well that she didn’t just get a double - she got a triple! The combination of her stone hitting the others got all three of the Swiss stones moving.
Only thing, it caught the Canadian Skip by surprise - she wasn’t expecting the third Swiss stone, the one that was shot rock, to move, since it was well guarded by the other stones. So when it started to move, she wasn’t able to get out of the way in time. The rock hit the Canadian Skip’s foot and stopped, actually a bit closer to the button than it had been before.
In that case, the Swiss Skip could have said, “You stopped it from moving - it stays there.” However, it was clearly an accident by the Canadian Skip, and probably no-one had been expecting a triple. The Swiss Skip just moved the stone to the back of the 12 foot, where it likely would have ended up if it hadn’t hit the Canadian Skip’s foot - still in play, but no longer shot rock, and not likely to have much impact on the rest of the shooting in that end.
No officials needed, and a very classy move by the Swiss Skip.
is there any real reason for this sport to be segregated into mens and womens?
Community curling also has mixed teams, but I’d guess competitive curling is divided into mens and womens mostly due to strength differences and sweeping. If you have strong sweepers it can make a big difference, and men are often much stronger sweepers than women.
In terms of other factors besides sweeping (delivery, accuracy, strategy), there probably isn’t much/any difference between men and women.
I’ve heard one of our local gold medalists (Nagano Olympics, 1998) commenting on that point. She said that in her experience, men can generally throw harder, so the men’s take-out shots are different from the women’s take-out shots. That in turn affects the entire strategy of the game, so men’s and women’s games play out a bit differently. I think that would be the main reason.
I tried curling once. I lasted about half an end before ending up in the hospital with a concussion.
I watched a little bit of the curling yesterday. It is fascinating. I saw a bald guy participating for the Canadian team. I was slightly amused that bald guy “curls”.
There’s an example of this at the moment; the men’s Great Britain and Switzerland teams are playing, and the Swiss skip is shooting second, which the commentators noted was pretty unusual.