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Being trained as a physicist, I sometimes (Ok, often) fall into the the trap of thinking that I know more about things than I really do, because I have training in some of the inner workings of matter. It's good for me when someone who knows much less about physics than I do puts my in my place by showing me that they know much more about an aspect of applied reality than I do.
My wife is back home, and her father is visiting. We'd given up using the fireplace in our house because it put lots of smoke into the house. This is very sad, because we like fires very much. When at their house, we'd discussed with my father in law the possible reasons for the fireplace not performing as it should. Yes, we had opened the damper. Yes, we'd primed the flue.
However, we now have a cheery fire burning in the fireplace. It turns out that the fireplace burns quite well, and doesn't smoke into the house if the fire basket (the metal grate-thing that the logs sit on) is pushed all the way to the back of the fairly deep fireplace. The fire burns nicely (and draws quite well; that is, the smoke is drawn up the chimney strongly). It never occured to my wife or I to move the fire away from the front.
Ah well--one mystery solved. :-)