"You are no fool and yet even you have fallen for it." Might well have done, but that's because it's a very plausible alternative explanation to the stated one.

But I'm still not seeing what is so much harder to achieve with suggestion than with slight of hand? Especially when he's doing everything that - at least on face value - would seem enough to do it with suggestion anyway.

I seem to remember a trick about a clock. There was lots of stuff about mind reading but when it came down to it he made a hand gesture for clock which the hands were at the time he wanted the guy to pick. I don't see what's so impossible that he picked up on that subconsciously. It's exactly the kind of thing people do all the time.

(edit) Also I don't mean hypnotic suggestion or anything like that. Just in case there's any confusion. Feed someone a prompt. Ask someone to pick from an arbitrary list, and let them pick what you prompted.