  The article discusses the following frequently arising question on the
spectral structure of periodic operators of mathematical physics (e.g.,
Schroedinger, Maxwell, waveguide operators, etc.). Is it true that one can
obtain the correct spectrum by using the values of the quasimomentum running
over the boundary of the (reduced) Brillouin zone only, rather than the whole
zone? Or, do the edges of the spectrum occur necessarily at the set of
``corner'' high symmetry points? This is known to be true in 1D, while no
apparent reasons exist for this to be happening in higher dimensions. In many
practical cases, though, this appears to be correct, which sometimes leads to
the claims that this is always true. There seems to be no definite answer in
the literature, and one encounters different opinions about this problem in the
community.
  In this paper, starting with simple discrete graph operators, we construct a
variety of convincing multiply-periodic examples showing that the spectral
edges might occur deeply inside the Brillouin zone. On the other hand, it is
also shown that in a ``generic'' case, the situation of spectral edges
appearing at high symmetry points is stable under small perturbations. This
explains to some degree why in many (maybe even most) practical cases the
statement still holds.
