Oldest Tricks in the Book

"A closing cadence ... is the oldest confidence trick of them all — knowing all the time, as one does, that there is scarcely a statement one can make that does not slip bit by bit with every word further and further from what to begin with showed every promise of encompassing some simple, serviceable truth." —the hilarious N. F. Simpson in his spoof interview with The Transatlantic Review (Summer 1966).

"It's the oldest trick in the book—you know, the ricochet flirt.  The more they ignore you, the more they like you."
—Kath & Kim, Episode 2.7

The diagram is our own.

The oldest trick in the book is to divert attention from bad news to whatever good news you can find. —John Tracy, How to Read a Financial Report (2009)

The oldest trick in the book: disguising the identity of an author in order to give heft to substandard work. —Adam Langer, Ellington Boulevard (2009)

This classic distraction, apparently as old as shoelaces themselves, is cited in Wikipedia as one of the oldest tricks in the book (2006).

Technology is a trickster, and it has been so since the first culture hero taught the human tribe how to spin wool before he pulled it over our eyes.  The trickster shows how intelligence fares in an unpredictable and chaotic world; he beckons us through the open doors of innovation and traps us in the prison of unintended consequences.
—Erik Davis, Techgnosis (1998)

One of the oldest tricks in the book: the water bucket is a surprise your noisy pooch won’t forget.
—Matthew Van Kyrk, Guide to Training Your Own Dog (1996)

—Jean-Benoit Nadeau, Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong (2003)

“Use tools.  In this case, human tools.”
    Di hit her forehead with her palm.  “Oh hell!  The oldest trick in the book, and I forgot it!  My God, that’s Crowley’s old trick—and the Kali cult’s, and a dozen others’!”
—Mercedes Lackey, Burning Water (1992)