# Watching World Curling **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [April 2, 2017, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/watching-world-curling/783559 "2017-04-02T02:58:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2017, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/watching-world-curling/783559/1 "2017-04-02T02:58:57Z")
I am concerned that several of the players look to me like they should be playing in the World Juniors :eek:, but the play is good! Swiss up 2 over Canada. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2017, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/watching-world-curling/783559/2 "2017-04-02T03:00:04Z")
The Swiss team has “Suisse” on their jackets and are francophone. If they were German speakers, would it be “Schweiz”, or does Switzerland always compete as “Suisse”? ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2017, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/watching-world-curling/783559/3 "2017-04-02T03:03:30Z")
Ice looks better than the ice for the Women’s World championship in China, which was frosty and spiderwebbed. This looks really clean. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2017, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/watching-world-curling/783559/4 "2017-04-02T03:06:36Z")
Gushue draws to the button for 2, so tie game. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2017, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/watching-world-curling/783559/5 "2017-04-02T03:15:57Z")
interesting that the Swiss skip, de Cruz, is throwing second. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2017, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/watching-world-curling/783559/6 "2017-04-02T04:23:43Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > The Swiss team has “Suisse” on their jackets and are francophone. > > If they were German speakers, would it be “Schweiz”, or does Switzerland always compete as “Suisse”? My club hosted the junior national championships a few years ago, and the USCA sent their ice gurus. It takes a lot to prep and maintain the ice for a tournament like that. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2017, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/watching-world-curling/783559/7 "2017-04-07T20:47:04Z")
I won’t read this as I have recorded the whole thing and watching one game at a time. Gushue just got past Edin in the game I just watched. Canada now 3-0. It seems to me that the Swiss women’s team, from Baden in Argau (so called to distinguish it from Baden-Baden) also had Suisse on their backs, so I guess that’s what they use. Homan ran the table in that tournament, just as the Jones team did in the 2014 Olympics. ---
**Author:** ![Grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2017, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/watching-world-curling/783559/8 "2017-04-07T20:56:26Z")
Team Netherlands looks like a high school team snuck on the plane. They did manage a win so it’s all good. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2017, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/watching-world-curling/783559/9 "2017-04-07T21:23:05Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Ice looks better than the ice for the Women’s World championship in China, which was frosty and spiderwebbed. This looks really clean. Well, it is in Edmonton. The dry, cool climate is perfect for ice making. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2017, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/watching-world-curling/783559/10 "2017-04-07T23:53:00Z")
A little trivia here. The word “brier” means a prickly plant or shrub, or a tangled mass of prickly plants. The root of a particular brier plant was once found to be the ideal material from which to carve a tobacco-smoking pipe, and many better pipes were made from brier. Tobaccos were processed for specific uses, and one type of tobacco, made for pipes, acquired the common name of Brier tobacco, as distinct from cigarette tobacco… The MacDonald’s tobacco company of Canada sponsored and had the naming rights to the national curling championships, which were named for MacDonald’s Brier tobacco, or, for short, simply “The Brier”. By extension, brier became the generic word, often used to designate any curling championship competition. It is now, officially, the Tim Horton’s Brier, with that fast food chain having assumed the naming rights surrendered by MacDonalds. But it’s still “The Brier”. Canadians will correct you, and tell you that it is spelled brier, not the same as the American word briar, as in “They ran through the briars And they ran through the brambles And they ran through the bushes Where a rabbit couldn’t go” But in fact they are both exactly the same word of the same origin. However according to the Ngram viewer, the -ar spelling variation has been, since antiquity, in both American and British usage, the more commonly used spelling. Spelled with an A in most literature, but with an E in Canadian curling circles. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2017, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/watching-world-curling/783559/11 "2017-04-08T17:03:34Z")
Should be interesting Page 3/4 game today. Hoping that Schuster can progress to the semifinal. Not thinking anyone is stopping Gushue this year. 😮 ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2017, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/watching-world-curling/783559/12 "2017-04-08T20:29:40Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > A little trivia here. The word “brier” means a prickly plant or shrub, or > a tangled mass of prickly plants. The root of a particular brier plant was once found to be the ideal material from which to carve a tobacco-smoking pipe, and many better pipes were made from brier. Tobaccos were processed for specific uses, and one type of tobacco, made for pipes, acquired the common name of Brier tobacco, as distinct from cigarette tobacco… The MacDonald’s tobacco company of Canada sponsored and had the naming rights to the national curling championships, which were named for MacDonald’s Brier tobacco, or, for short, simply “The Brier”. By extension, brier became the generic word, often used to designate any curling championship competition. It is now, officially, the Tim Horton’s Brier, with that fast food chain having assumed the naming rights surrendered by MacDonalds. But it’s still “The Brier”. > > Canadians will correct you, and tell you that it is spelled brier, not the same as the American word briar, as in “They ran through the briars And they ran through the brambles And they ran through the bushes Where a rabbit couldn’t go” But in fact they are both exactly the same word of the same origin. However according to the Ngram viewer, the -ar spelling variation has been, since antiquity, in both American and British usage, the more commonly used spelling. Spelled with an A in most literature, but with an E in Canadian curling circles. Interesting. Now, why do we call it the “hog line”? I’ve heard one answer, but I’m not sure how much credence to give it. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2017, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/watching-world-curling/783559/13 "2017-04-09T18:06:19Z")
The usual given etymology is that, in Scotland, a young sheep is called a “hog”. That eventually got applied to the “runt” of the litter, the one eventually culled early. So a a stone that doesn’t make it far enough is a “hog”, and the “hog line” determines such stones. ---
**Author:** ![BeepKillBeep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9e8a1a/32.png) [@BeepKillBeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeepKillBeep)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2017, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/watching-world-curling/783559/14 "2017-04-09T19:42:24Z")
I’m looking forward to the game tonight. Go Canada! It should be a good match as Sweden is a strong team although I like Canada’s odds. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2017, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/watching-world-curling/783559/15 "2017-04-09T21:55:01Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > The usual given etymology is that, in Scotland, a young sheep is called a “hog”. That eventually got applied to the “runt” of the litter, the one eventually culled early. So a a stone that doesn’t make it far enough is a “hog”, and the “hog line” determines such stones. Yeah, that’s the one I’ve heard. I read one other source that said no one really knows. ---
**Author:** ![Rysto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecccb3/32.png) [@Rysto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysto)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2017, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/watching-world-curling/783559/16 "2017-04-10T00:15:59Z")
Man, that first end is a shining example of why the free guard rule exists. I can’t imagine trying to watch curling if every end was like that. ---
**Author:** ![BeepKillBeep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9e8a1a/32.png) [@BeepKillBeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeepKillBeep)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2017, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/watching-world-curling/783559/17 "2017-04-10T00:42:24Z")
Both teams showed up for this one. It is going to be a great match. I’m enjoying it a lot so far as the 3rd end comes to a close. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2017, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/watching-world-curling/783559/18 "2017-04-10T00:53:21Z")
A Harp, some nachos and salsa, and a World Cup gold medal match with Canada in. Good way to end a busy weekend. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2017, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/watching-world-curling/783559/19 "2017-04-10T01:02:35Z")
Sweden sitting three. Excellent shot and brushing. ---
**Author:** ![BeepKillBeep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9e8a1a/32.png) [@BeepKillBeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeepKillBeep)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2017, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/watching-world-curling/783559/20 "2017-04-10T01:08:54Z")
The first team to score 2 is probably going to win at this rate. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/watching-world-curling/783559.md?page=2)