FormulaDriven asks:

“I am curious about how PlusWord puzzles are devised – it seems the trickiest part would be finding 10 answers that interlock on the grid (I’ve tried devising them myself and needed a lot of trial and error to get there). Do you use any kind of IT tools to help generate those?”

Chris Lancaster, Puzzles Editor, replies:

It’s great to hear that you enjoy PlusWord! The trickiest part of compiling the puzzles is definitely finding 10 five-letter words to fit in the grid. Excluding proper nouns, there are only around 4,000 suitable words – which sounds like a lot, but isn’t when trying to squeeze 10 of them into a grid. It’s a largely manual process, although I use a piece of software called Crossword Compiler when I get stuck.

It’s particularly hard to avoid using the same words on a very regular basis, and I lose count of the times that only certain words (such as ESTER, INANE, ENEMA and others with similar vowel patterns) are the only ones which will fit, so I need to backtrack and start again. It’s definitely far faster (and more enjoyable) to solve a PlusWord puzzle than it is to compile one!

Gleebooks, which has run a bricks-and-mortar shop in central Sydney for 40 years, said it decided to make its online service free when the government limited public gatherings to curb the spread of the illness that has infected nearly 2,000 Australians and killed eight of them.

From Monday, the restrictions went a step further when the government ordered all retailers to shut except for grocery stores, pharmacists and others deemed essential.

Whether that included Gleebooks was unclear but customers will get their books regardless, its managers decided, with the introduction of free drop-offs in surrounding suburbs.

The shop is among thousands around the world that have been forced to reinvent themselves virtually overnight to survive the biggest disruption to a sector already ravaged by the arrival of large internet rivals like Amazon.com Inc more than two decades ago.

“Because we’re a bookshop and we’re a retail venue, we realized we needed to make it as easy as possible for people to get their books without exposing themselves to any sort of risk,” the shop’s event manager, James Ross, told Reuters.

For customers outside the store’s bike-determined radius, Gleebooks cut postage fees for orders over A$50.

Customers have embraced the service, with an immediate spike in online sales, said Ross. The demand for craft and children’s activity books had risen, not surprisingly given that many schools have closed.

Nerida Ross, the store’s cyclist, said books offered an escape for those cooped up at home.

“Books are a nice way of traveling without having to go anywhere,” she said.

“A lot of people I know who have been working from home have been using the time that they aren’t commuting to read more or talk to friends or be creative in some way. We’re learning a new way of being and I think reading is a really big part of that.”

The images were broadcast less than 24 hours after Prime Minister Scott Morrison imposed a limit of just five people at weddings – the couple, a celebrant and two witnesses – from Wednesday midnight, to rein in the spread of a coronavirus.

Video gave a fleeting glimpse of a wedding dress from under a huddle of umbrellas at the family’s Australia Zoo in northeastern Queensland state and an outdoor area surrounded by flower arches and palm trees, Australian Broadcasting Corp said.

“How many people will get #COVID-19 from this wedding?” one Australian user of social media, Vivian Harris, asked on Twitter, referring to the disease spread by the virus.

“Think about the purpose, not the legalities. Virus doesn’t care which side of midnight it is.”

Another Twitter user, with the handle Briar Rose 83, said, “Cannot believe Bindi Irwin had her wedding today. What a terrible and selfish role model she is. So many people are at risk. Shame shame shame.”

Australia Zoo did not immediately reply to an email query after business hours.

Irwin, 21, got engaged last July to her American boyfriend Chandler Powell, who works at the zoo, ABC said.

Late on Tuesday, Irwin posted a photo of herself with her father and said on social media, “Thank you for being my guiding light. You’re always with me.”

On March 11, she had posted a photo of herself with Powell and her brother, Robert, after choosing flowers for her bridal bouquet.

Bindi Irwin leapt to fame as a child when her quirky conservationist father, whose television programmes were popular around the world, died in 2006, after a stingray’s barb pierced his heart while he was filming off the Great Barrier Reef.

She won reality show Dancing with the Stars in the United States in 2015, when she was 17.