On May 16, 2012, at 6:27 PM, Jansy wrote: Please note that only the first limerick was creatred by Knox. At least, according to the entries in "The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations" (Oxford University Press, 1979) where God's answer is fittingly listed under "Anonymous." ... I invented an association of my own to another fabulous consonant avian solution: Namely, Cantaboff / "Chantecleer" .... - Inspite of Dmitri's musical career, Vladimir Nabokov was not overly fond of operas and singing. His father and Sergei seem to have often attended concerts together. VN was "off"..

Deary Jansy

What you call the "first limerick" doesn't make sense without the second, so I think they are both the work of MRK, who, being a monsignor, was very Catholic, and being very Catholic, was very anti-atheism, which of course is part of the force of the limerick ...

Now, as to V. Cantaboff - just thinking - devious VN may have used the additional misdirection of using latinate letters to hide cyrillic ones. So the C of Cantaboff may be an S and the n may be an h. That would make the letters to unscramble (listing consonants first) V, S, H, (or SH?) T (or TS?) B FF (aka V) and the vowels a, a, and o.

So perhaps the solution is VV shtob' Fa?? But what is the explanation?

In my interpretation of PF there was another shto b' [meaning because & usually transcribed as chtoby, but pronounced shto b'] but I'll have to go to the archives. Just a mo' ... Sorry, it was nikto b' - nob'dy b'lieved me then ... If Yantsi is right in surmising a musical (nb that cant has at least three possible meanings*) interpretation, "fa" could be the fourth tone of the scale. I am also reminded that the Mitford sisters called their father "Fa." A musical pun perhaps?