As athletes and spectators get ready for the Winter Olympics happening in Italy in February 2026, the often misunderstood and sometimes maligned sport of curling will once again take center stage (or, rather, center ice). With origins in Scotland in the 16th century, curling is especially popular in Canada, the Nordic countries, and, increasingly, in the United States. In some ways similar to bocce or shuffleboard, curling has been described as chess on ice because of its strategic nature. We covered some of the basics of the game in our feature “On the button,” but figured this is also a good opportunity to define some terms in the context of curling and explain what and why the team captain, or skip, is yelling about.
Sheet: The name of the frozen playing surface. It is 146-150 feet long and allows play in both directions.
End: Kind of like how baseball is divided into innings, curling is divided into ends. A curling game has either eight or ten ends.
Rock: The 44-lb granite stones that curlers slide down the ice to score points.
House: The scoring zone at each end of the ice, consisting of four concentric circles painted on the ice.
Button: This is the center of the house and the point of reference for scoring. The team with the stone closest to the button wins the end and scores points for all stones closer to the button than the opponent’s best stone.
Broom: The tool used to sweep the ice. Modern brooms often feature lightweight carbon fibre handles and heads with specialized fabrics designed to create specific effects on the ice. They don’t
look anything like the broom in your closet, but the traditional name is still used.
Guards: Shots that block the house.
Draws: Shots that are designed to get around the guards, often using physics-defying curling moves.
Takeouts: Hard shots that knock the other stones out of play.
Hurry: What the skips yell when they want their teammates to sweep as fast as they can.
Hurry Hard: What the skips yell when they want teammates to sweep as fast as they can while applying downward pressure to melt the ice and make the stone go faster and farther.
Clean: What the skips yell when they want teammates to keep their brooms on the ice without much pressure, but clear away anything that could disrupt the stone’s momentum.
Hammer: The last rock of the end.
