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bobbycollins,

I am also from the North - but in fairness, we had the Three Peaks puzzle not long ago. And the same could be said about sports, classic TV series etc.

Also, like other people here, I found the store on the wiki page for the square.

I think a bigger offender is the Times, which has London-centric clues more often than I'd like.

Yes, I found it on Wiki too and it is our capital city but........a shop?

I think malone made the same point at 29.

I don't know the building, but wiki says it's Grade II*, which would make it a landmark I feel.

I don't mind the landmark being in London and I don't mind the landmark being a shop - but I have many friends who've lived in London for over 30 years and they've never heard mention of the place! Wiki does confirm its entitlement to 'landmark' but I still find it a little disappointing somehow.

Well, it's certainly not Big Ben is it? And I can't say I'm all that familiar with the Royal Court, which didn't exactly leap out at me. But perhaps something obvious would have made it too easy.

Anyway, we've all changed the five letters and got the phrase, so job done. But . . .

I know this conversation is in danger of going on forever, yet I keep wondering why Triton chose this particular setter, and this particular location.

I've finally finished it!
It took literally hours & hours and I'm exhausted!
Thanks to you all.

Good, mjk! There were lots of steps to this one... do this, do that, then do this... it was quite satisfying to finish it.

Well, it was all a coincidence after all (apologies to murky, muraria and nelson for spotting Don in the first place - because he was never there).

Well done malone and spoffy for avoiding this particular wild-goose chase.

It was good of Triton to explain his puzzle in such detail on the fifteensquared blog - it's well worth a visit I think. He does appear to be a little miffed though (the puzzle hasn't been very well received there).

I think a proper endgame would have helped - we nearly came up with one just rummaging around in the rubble but Triton had a chance to build it from scratch - what a wasted opportunity.

I think 'miffed' is probably putting it a bit strongly. I try to set puzzles that are a bit different from the normal, and I realise that (i) sometimes they won't work as well as I hope, and (ii) they will not always be to everyone's taste (or sometimes to anyone's taste!!)

I appreciate people taking the time to complete my puzzles, and I'm very pleased to get their honest feedback - good or bad - which is helpful to me when producing future puzzles. Of course, I would be delighted to hear that every solver thought my puzzle was the best they'd ever seen (what setter wouldn't?), but that just ain't gonna happen.

I do perhaps get just a tad miffed when people criticise individual clues that were perfectly fair simply because they couldn't solve them, given that the IQ is generally reckoned to be close to the Listener in terms of average toughness, but a bit of comfort eating usually gets me over it ;-)

Triton - It's very good of you to reply here too.

I enjoyed the puzzle but I think the preamble promised rather more than it delivered. I enjoyed the clues most of all - I thought they were difficult, very inventive and quite fair.

I'm still struggling with the fact that all of our inventions were just coincidences! It just goes to show that if we're promised a narrative we'll move heaven and earth to construct it (some religions have been based on flimsier 'stuff').