Bill Bryson suggests that a truly definitive English holorime has not yet been achieved. However, he points to an old children's riddle as a near example. The riddle asks how to demonstrate in three steps that a sheet of paper represents a lazy dog.
The riddle unfolds as follows: first, a sheet of paper can be described as an ink-lined plane; second, an inclined plane refers to a slope upwards; and finally, one can conclude that a slow pup corresponds to a lazy dog. Through this clever reasoning, Bryson highlights the playfulness and intricacies of the English language.