An odd phrase I know but when I was stumped on a word I was trying to find it in a dictionary.

Obviously I was taking a long time so it appeared that I was "reading", so a smart alec says "Are you actually reading a dictionary?"

They wouldn't let me explain the word search, but reading A Technique for Producing Ideas I found a good comeback.

As James Webb Young wrote "The fellow who said he tried reading the dictionary but couldn't get the hang of the story simply missed the point: namely, that it is a collection of short stories."