Pale Fire created by Kinbote, features an entry for a "Botkin, V.," describing this Botkin as an "American scholar of Russian descent"—and referring to a note in the Commentary on line 894 of Shade's poem, in which no such person is directly mentioned but a character suggests that "Kinbote" is "a kind of anagram of Botkin or Botkine". In this interpretation, "Gradus" the murderer is an American named Jack Grey who wanted to kill Judge Goldsworth, whose house "Pale Fire's" commentator—whatever his "true" name is—is renting. Goldsworth had condemned Grey to an asylum from which he escaped shortly before mistakenly killing Shade,
A Whiter Shade of Pale "The Miller's Tale"). Thus, this piece can be considered an early example of progressive rock. The phrase "a whiter shade of pale" has since gained widespread use in the English language, noticed by several dictionaries. As such, the phrase is today often used in contexts independent of any consideration of the song. It has also been heavily paraphrased, in forms like "an Xer shade of Y", to the extent that it has been recognised as a snowclone – a type of cliché and phrasal template. The song is in moderate time in C major and is characterised by the bassline