Jamming number one. the unwritten word

A newspaper Challenge, for the 21st century.Imagine this. you give a spectator some money, and ask them to go to any local news agent, and buy any newspaper they want. Preferably a broadsheet, with words, and few pictures.
This they do.
The news paper could even be in another language.
You then instruct them to remove any page from the paper, and to pick a side.
This is laid out on a table.
Ask them to look over the page, and pick out a word to their liking. Make it something of say, 5 letters or more.Then, ask them to cover their word with their hand.

You take a pen, and draw a square around their hand, to hone your thoughts in.
Then, they remove their hand from the paper, and you point out that , there are many words within the area, theirs being only one of them.

Now, you tear out the square of news print, and then tear up the resulting square into small pieces.
You then divine the chosen word.

Potentially, you point out, A word in thousands.

The how is very simple, and it’s based on one thing we all do.
If you are asked to put your hand over something, you almost always will place that thing dead centre of your hand. So, you know that if you ask someone to place their hand on the word, it will be odds on, that their word will be in the middle of the square, which you draw around their hand.
If this is so, then you have only to do a centre tear, in order to recieve the information you need.

There will be more than one word on your billet. But fear not, since you have limited the choice of letters to five or more, you will only have to go on a short fishing trip to gain the upper hand.

It strikes me that the method used here, with the placing of the hand has applications in other effects too, as an out.