There was a popular (then, anyway) notion that drinking a large glass of water would kill hiccups, and it sometimes seemed to work, but other times it didn't. L

There was a popular (then, anyway) notion that drinking a large glass of water would kill hiccups, and it sometimes seemed to work, but other times it didn't. Long story short, it works when you swallow at just the right time relative to the hiccup cycle. An ordinary swallow starts as a voluntary action but switches over to an automatic involuntary completion. Try to get that start of the involuntary part to happen in the last quarter of the hiccup cycle, a bit before the hiccup arrives. You don't even need to use water, just time a swallow just right and it cancels out the hiccup cycle from retriggering.