stumble on

He was like a middle-distance runner with a clear and commanding advantage with the bell sounding, only to stumble on his laces.

By the middle of the 20th century, a dog named Jingles had helped his owner, the psychologist Boris Levinson, stumble on something startling: A boy who had been so withdrawn his doctors recommended hospitalization spontaneously came out of his shell when Jingles was in the room.

When I did stumble on “Brett Martin, You a Nice Man, Yes,” I naturally assumed it was about a different, more famous Brett Martin: perhaps Brett Martin, the left-handed reliever who until recently played for the Texas Rangers; or Brett Martin, the legendary Australian squash player; or even Clara Brett Martin, the Canadian who in 1897 became the British Empire’s first female lawyer.

It’s a lonely time of year, but, browsing the internet, I stumble on a site called Candy.ai that promises to help.

"And this is also the way forward for us to find solutions for this climatic catastrophe. If you study these natural processes, there's a good chance you will stumble on something that will be actually useful."