I will do my best to describe this beauty! It’s not new, but an ingenious puzzle all the same.

Imagine a wooden dowel, approximately the shape and size of a biro pen. It has an "eye" like a needle, through which a loop of string is threaded. The length of the loop of string is approximately half the length of the dowel. This item can be handed out because there is nothing to find.

Here is where the fun starts.

The magician passes the dowel through a buttonhole of the jacket or whatever the spectator is wearing. Then passes the dowel through the string loop. When the spectator tries to remove it, they find they cannot! No matter how hard they try. Unless they know how of course.

I have used this at children’s parties and conventions. Just attach it and leave it. Then listen to people talking about this ingenious gimmick, and about YOU!
It costs nothing to make but plays big!

That sounds really great. Add your phone # and name and add if they cut it off they get 5 years bad luck. Any chance of a p.m. on how to make these up? I would really like to try this.

Thanks for your time.

I think that these might be available from Fun, Inc. in Chicago.

They are often used as a gimmick at trade shows and conventions. A company will hire attractive models to approach attendees and affix them to their buttonhole. On the dowel (or pencil) is the company name and information on how to get to their hospitality suite or booth where someone will show them how to remove them. Since it's an interesting puzzle, many leave them on and play with it. Finally, they will make their way to the company's location... which is the whole point.
Dennis Loomis

Magic Holetite Pencil
The famous American puzzle inventor Sam Loyd was asked by the head of the New York Life Insurance Co., John McCall, to make an advertising puzzle that their salesmen could take with them, and that would make their clients remember its message.

Loyd went home and returned to McCall the next day with a small stick attached to a loop of green cord. The stick looked like a policeman's billy club and it was slightly longer than the loop.

McCall failed to be duly impressed. "What's the purpose of it?" he asked Loyd. Whereupon Loyd took McCall by his lapels, stuck the cord through the buttonhole and the stick in turn through the loop. "Alright," he said,
"let's make a bet. If within half an hour, you've gotten the stick out, without cutting the cord, I'll give you one dollar. If not, you owe me one."

McCall pulled and pushed and, in short, spent 30 minutes of his valuable time trying in vain to remove the stick. After his time was up, Loyd accepted his dollar with the words: "In return for a $10,000 life insurance policy from NYLI, I'll take the thing right off of you!" Now McCall was impressed. "By this our clients will surely remember our salesmen!"

The Buttonhole Puzzle became one of Loyd's most successful puzzles and it created the phrase "to buttonhole" someone.

Slocum, Botermans; New Book of Puzzles, Freeman, New York, 1992, p78-79
References

* Clifford W. Ashley; The Ashley Book of Knots, New York, 1944

(German: Das Ashley-Buch der Knoten, Edition Maritim, Hamburg, 5. Aufl. 1997)

Chapter 33: tricks and puzzles, diagram 2611 (Pseudo-Magic-Pencil solution)

* Henry Ernest Dudeney; Puzzles and Curious Problems, Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd., London 1931,

Problem 349: Releasing the Stick

* Jerry Slocum, Jack Botermans; Puzzles Old & New, U. Wash. Press, 1987, p114

(German: Geduldsspiele der Welt, Hugendubel, 1987, p114)

Note: The bet is $100.

* Jerry Slocum, Botermans; New Book of Puzzles, Freeman, New York, 1992, p78-79

Name: Buttonhole Puzzle later sold as Magic Holetite Pencil

* Jerry Slocum; The Puzzle Arcade, Klutz, 1996, ISBN 1-57054-056-X, p4

Name: The Buttonhole Killer Pencil

The book contains the buttonhole puzzle.

* Wei Zhang; Exploring Math Through Puzzles, Key Curriculum Press, 1996, ISBN 1-55953-222-X,
p29-31, Section: Loop Extension Puzzles.

Name: Magic Pencil, puzzle 7
p70, Name: Bugballs (Dutch: Treiterballen, Treiterkraaltjes), Inventors: Christian Freeling, Anneke Treep, puzzle 27 (Het Knoopeknauwertje No. 5 (April 1997))

* Gerd Oberdorfer; Phänomenale Mathe-Magie, Zytglogge, Bern, 1994, p87

Name: Happy Puzzling-"Klammer" (a Pseudo-Magic-Pencil)

* Puzzle Craft, Kit U Handy Series, Cooperative Recreational Services Inc., Delaware, Ohio, no year given, p4

Name: Buttonholer

* Pieter van Delft, Jack Botermans; Denkspiele der Welt, Hugendubel, 1977, p118

Name: Die elastische Schlinge

* Scot Morris; The next Book of Omni Games, 1988, ISBN 0-452-26151-1, p14

Name: Pencil Problem

* Woodrow & Irmgard Carpenter, Cold Spring, KY 41076, USA

14th IPP 1994 Seattle exchange puzzle: The Buttonhole Puzzle expanded

Shows variations fixing the buttonhole puzzle.

* There is a US Patent number of 848067 for the Magic Holetite Pencil.

* The Perplexing Pencil Puzzle from AIMS Education Foundation

* The Pencil Puzzle from Creative Puzzles

Sources for Pencils

* Arabesk, Avenue Concordia 17 B, 3062 LA Rotterdam, Netherlands
Phone: +31-(0)10-2140361 Fax: +31-(0)10-2140390

Email: arabesk@arabesk.nl

Product Name: "Button hole puzzle", Product No: A395.0500

* Bartl GmbH, Brunnthaler Str. 17, D-84518 Garching an der Alz, Germany
Phone: +49-8634-9885-0 Fax: +49-8634-9885-95

Email: hacki@bartlgmbh.com

Product Name: "Teufelsschlingen", Product No's: 3539, 3535 and 3544

* Kubi-Games, P.O. Box 1460, D-35058 Frankenberg, Germany
Phone: +49-6451-1863 Fax: +49-6451-24543

Email: info@kubi-games.de

Product Name: "Knopflochstab"

* Sanders Mfg. Company, P.O. Box 101601, Nashville, TN 37224-1601, USA
Phone: +1-615-254-6611

Product Name: "Magic Hotlite Pencil", Product No: 33A

Dennis Loomis

Great info Dennis. Just for fun I went to look up the patent. I think the number you gave was incorrect, but it has to be close because of the 1907 date.

Just in case anyone cares:

I did some more research on the patent for the Magic Holetite Pencil. The patent number given in Dennis Loomis' post (from the following web site:
http://www.mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de/~......cil.html )
appears to be take from the instruction sheet published at various times. It can be seen in Jerry Slocum and Jack Botermans book "New Book of Puzzles".

The patent number 848067 is for a "Key Fastener" and has nothing to do with the puzzle.

I also did some checking of various permutations of possible patent numbers, also to no avail.

I emailed Jerry Slocum who said he has never found a patent issued. I did a bit more research with the USPO web site and although I found a number of puzzles using string (cls/272/159), none were Loyd's pencil.

My conclusion is that there never was a patent issued and that someone used a false patent number to slow down would-be copycats.

If you like puzzles, do search the patents. There are some interesting ones there.

Jeff,
Thanks for taking the time to research this and sharing your findings. Certainly the thing is being made by lots of companies today and there seems to be no problem with making them for your own use.
I suspect that you're right about the patent "bluff." In today’s world, a US Patent is scant protection from all of the copies and rips-offs that come in from the far East. Ask Graham Putnam at Fun Incorporated. He bought the rights to Spiked Coin from Matell. (Zimmerman had created it for Matell when they were doing a series of magic tricks for regular toy stores.) He paid good money for it and has sold lots of them in his "Royal" line of magic. But then the cheap rip-off started coming in from the Orient, and in practical terms he was just powerless to do anything about it. I've seen a small version of it blister packed and sold for 79 cents in some stores! Imagine that, they can make the die, do the injection molding of the two parts of the box, the coin, and the eight spikes (or is it six?), package it, ship it across the Pacific, and sell it for 79 cents retail? What a world we live in!
Denny

Wow! An amazing story about a very common item that I never, ever learned to remove.
MartyK