"Cannot connect to any servers" (but I can telnet to the server)

[jbrea]

I ran into a weird behavior: Everything runs normally when I am connected to the internet (wlan or ethernet), e.g.

$ dict -I -v
Configuration file:
   server localhost
  dictd 1.13.1/rf on Linux 5.17.4-arch1-1
  On machina: up 11:07, 8 forks (43.2/hour)
  
  Database      Headwords         Index          Data  Uncompressed
  moby-thesaurus      30263        528 kB         10 MB         28 MB

When I am offline I get

$ dict -I -v
Configuration file:
   server localhost
Cannot connect to any servers

but I can still access and query the local dict server with

$ telnet localhost 2628

Any ideas why dict fails to connect to the server when I am offline?