Thievery is equivalent to Disarming in MM6. You can assume that all chests are trapped, and the only characters who can open them without setting the traps off are characters with the Thievery skill. There are a couple of chests in one dungeon (I cannot off-hand remember which) which contains two traps whose only function is to kill the character that opens them, and it doesn't matter how skilled at Thievery the character is. Also, there are other dungeons in which you have to sacrifice characters to win through, so Stone to Flesh, Raise Dead, and Resurrection are essential spells in the game.
The "two front characters" - it's as if the party travels in a column two abreast and three deep, with the two leftmost characters being at the front, and the two rightmost being at the back. When you come to a locked door or a barrier, it's the two leftmost people who boot it open and take the consequent damage. If you need to change the order of your party, highlight one character and CTRL-click on another one, and the two will swap places.
HTH - you're right in assuming that this means "Hope this helps", but in these Taverns, no sarcasm is implied. When we say "hope this helps", we really mean it. By and large, this is a well-mannered board, and trolls and other disturbers of the peace get pretty short shrift. The few acronyms in common use here are well-known ones - HTH, IIRC, IM(H)O, TTBOMK, and ROTFL. The only unusual one is WATP, which means "We aim to please." HTH! 
