I do a variant of this (but I didn’t find it in a cartoon). Pour a glass of water, and drink it in tiny sips thus: sip-swallow-sip-swallow-sip-swallow-sip-swallow (etc) as fast as you can. It has never failed for me.
Seeing the comments about peanut butter cures as well makes me think that maybe repetitive swallowing is what’s working here. Much as I like peanut butter, I’d suggest water is better for you. 
j
My guess is that many of these cures are highly effective, same as blowing on the red light to make it turn green. Hey, sometimes it takes longer than other times, but it always works in the end!
I’m like @solost - I have a horror of getting a permanent case of the hiccups. I don’t seem to get the hiccups much anymore, but through age 40 or 50, I got them pretty often. Usually they weren’t TOO persistent, but once as a passenger in a car, I hiccuped all the way from Montreal to Boston.
Miraculously, the driver didn’t kill me. He wanted to, though, and I didn’t blame him. He could have used a “mercy killing” defense in court if he had, as it would have been a mercy for us both. My ghost would have happily testified in his defense.
Our family remedy is a teaspoon of sugar on the tongue washed down with a cup of water.
I rarely get them but, when I do, my never miss cure is the following.
Take a pencil (preferably clean), insert it horizontally in your mouth, push it into your mouth as far as you can, and clench it between your teeth. Get a glass of water and start to drink it. The clenched pencil keeps your mouth from closing so, as you swallow, air can come up from your stomach and escape while the liquid goes down. Voila, no hiccups! 
Plug your ears tightly. Grip a plastic cup with your teeth and drink several ounces of water out of the plastic cup. It works every time. You can also have someone else plug your ears and drink water out of a drinking glass of any sort. The former works if you are on your own.
Is it just performing any silly looking act that makes them go away?
Almost never get them, but my never fail cure is to hold my breath (doesn’t have to be a deep one), stare at and concentrate on my solar plexus.
I know, right? I was hoping we’d get a bunch of folksy-sounding remedies - you take a turkey quill, dip it in turpentine, spread the turpentine on the back of your hand, and hold your hand under your nose while you recite “how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood” three times as fast as you can
Is it possible the placebo effect is hard at work with hiccup cures?
When my parents were having a party and someone got hiccups, my mom would put a paper grocery bag over their head, have them spin in a circle while singing Jimmy Crack Corn and she would hit them (lightly) in the head with a broom. You couldn’t hiccup while laughing.
Hey, @solost beat me to it. I’ve never heard another person use that technique. Glad I’m not the only one who finds it useful. 
For real intractable cases that have gone on for days or more and resisted other interventions, I’ve found that thorazine worked pretty well.
You are (or were) a doctor, right? What ARE hiccups, and why should any of the folk cures referenced here work?
@Cardigan Just a few quick thoughts on the topic, accrued after 40+ years in medicine. 
pathophysiology. A hiccup occurs due to an involuntary, intermittent, spasmodic contraction of the diaphragm and intercostal muscles. This causes sudden inspiration that ends with abrupt closure of the glottis, generating the “hic” sound.
Etiologies for prolonged hiccups include stuff like
Seems some of the folk remedies named above involve these sorts of things. Drinking water in unusual ways, swallowing thick substances, startling people, etc. involve interruptions to normal respiratory function or vagus nerve stimulation.
Precisely! I will have patients (when I had patients, anyway) try a LOT of these maneuvers before resorting to meds, in 99% of the cases. I’ve cleared up a few cases of hiccups by flushing out debris from an ear, where said debris was tickling the ear drum.
I also stopped having persistent hiccups since I was probably 12, but the cure we used back then, and which works for my wife most recently is eating a spoon full of peanut butter. Again it’s probably the effort it takes to get it down that changes the breathing and disrupts the hiccup cycle.
Not for you, Qadgop, for the hiccup victim.
Oh man, I hate hiccups. I remember a story I saw on tv awhile back about a young girl who’d had them for quite some time. I had to change the channel because it was causing me so much anxiety. Just thinking about it can almost cause a panic attack. Thankfully, I don’t get them often or for long when I do.
I tease the kids with “Boo” when they get them. I hold my breath and that usually does the trick for me.
Breath-holding is my go-to, since it’s portable and requires nothing external such as a drinking glass.
Sometimes I can feel a bout coming on and manage to interrupt it before it gets started, by altering my breathing. I can’t even really describe what I do - it’s almost a subconscious thing.
I tend to get them pretty regularly - usually for no obvious reason, though it’s quite possible my GERD is a factor. When they are really annoying, I’ll often expostulate DAMMIT right after a hiccup - to the point where in our household, hiccups are called The Dammits.
When breath-holding fails, I’ll do the opposite-side-of-the-drinking-glass trick. If THAT fails, a teaspoon of sugar will usually do the deed.
Teaspoon of sugar with enough vinegar to fully wet it. Swallow in one go.