My grandfather, a scientist, said there were two pressure points that could stop a sneeze. One is the one you see in cartoons: just below the nose (real pressure, though, not just a symbolic placement of the index finger). The other, more discreet, is right at the top of the bridge of your nose, below the brow ridge. You can press there as if in deep thought and stifle the incipient sneeze.
I used to start every school year with hayfever at the height of the season for my allergens, lots of sneezes and lots of Kleenex, carrying on like a crazy person just when everybody was making their great first impressions, courting teachers and picking friends. (No allergy shots back then.) So I had a big stake in my grandfather’s method. And yes, it worked.
Sometimes, though, the sneeze would backfire, turn inside out, making a weird inverted implosion. And sometimes it would halt at the pressure, then strike again immediately, before I could stop it. Big explosion.
I started getting shots about 30 years ago, still go for a maintenance shot every four weeks, and they changed my ife.