Dear SB,
Actually, Jansy's question strikes at the heart of the solution to the Pale
Fire puzzle - - my solution I guess I should say. It is the confusion of c,
k, and s that gave me the first inkling of what was afoot.
The index title page tells us that the three main characters of the book are
G, K, & S. After staring at those three letters for quite some time I began
to see the G as a modified C and then the solution came to me: C = K = S.
By coincidence (so far as I know) the disparate sounds /k/ and /s/ are
represented in the Greek and Roman alphabets as "c".
That is, in Greek "c" respresents the sound /s/
whereas in Latin "c" represents the sound /k/,
hence Caesar in Latin was pronounced something like Kaiser.
But in English the letter "c" can represent either sound. So we pronounce
Caesar as if it began with an /s/ sound. The word "Cyrillic" illustrates
both uses of "c".
Do you see?
Carolyn
*In some slavic languages the sound /ts/ can also be represented by "c",
hence in Russian Caesar came to be pronounced tsar.