Wendy Law obituary

The quiptic crossword is billed in the Guardian as the “puzzle for beginners and those in a hurry”. The mind-bending tricks and idiosyncratic conventions that are sometimes to be found in the cryptic are avoided: the emphasis is on pleasure. It was an ideal style for Wendy Law, otherwise known as the crossword setter Hectence, who has died aged 65 of cancer.

In the Guardian, where she started, and at the Financial Times from 2019, where she used the setter name Zamorca, from the Bosnian for “guinea pig” (the animals were a lifelong passion for Wendy), she was cherished by solvers for fair, accessible clues.

Creating tractable puzzles, however, is not an easier process than regular cryptics; in fact, in having to keep things ostensibly simple, the quiptic setter’s job could be said to be more challenging.

Wendy first posted a sample of her puzzles to my predecessor as the Guardian’s crossword editor, Hugh Stephenson, in 1998. She received a reply saying that the paper would “keep it on file”, and resigned herself to what she took to be a polite rejection; a year later, she heard that the paper was to launch a new weekly puzzle with her first as the fourth in the series.

The name Hectence became a familiar sight in the Guardian: Wendy compiled 217 puzzles over 27 years, and was known among solvers for being keen on a pangram: a grid that contains every letter of the alphabet, a self-imposed challenge she would sometimes regret.

It is sometimes assumed that the relationship between setter and editor is a battle of wits; as her editor from 2024, I looked forward to every exchange with Wendy because her clues were a pleasure to discuss and because she was a delightful person to discuss them with. She was the most prolific quiptic setter and the only one to have appeared every year. Her crosswords have drawn in solvers who would otherwise be nervous – and the archive continues to do so – for that, many of us can be grateful.

Wendy’s first puzzles were for her mother. She was born in Manchester, to Derek Sherwin, a chemist, and Pat (nee Smethurst). They had hoped for more children; when Wendy realised she would be an only child, she created the imaginary companions Potence and Hectence.

The family moved to Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire for Derek’s work, and Wendy’s devotion to pork pies began. After King Edward VII school, she went to Leeds University, initially to study history of art, but switched to English and Italian despite not having studied Italian at A-level, graduating in 1982. It was there that she met her future husband, Derek Law, who was impressed by her owning a portable television. They solved crosswords from the Leeds Student newspaper at lunch and went to gigs in the evening; they married in 1982 and had two daughters, Donna and Robyn.

In a 2021 interview, she told me that one of her daughters remarked that she discussed her guinea pigs but not her children. “Lots of people have daughters,” Wendy replied, “it’s far more interesting to have guinea pigs.” Guinea pigs were not her sole passion – gig-going, Manchester City and of course crosswords competed for her time – but they were a constant.

She looked after more than 30 and when she visited a Peruvian restaurant with guinea pigs on the menu, she made a point of showing the waiter pictures of her pets.

From 1994 Wendy worked for South Cambridgeshire district council in education finance; continuing professional development was encouraged, and she elected to train as a librarian, leading her to work in the Willingham village library from 1999. “I finally ended up where I should have started,” she reflected. “In libraries.”

She contributed to the talking books service, sending audio books to Cambridgeshire residents with visual impairments, and became district supervisor to the county’s libraries, driving between them in the Mazda MX-5 she called “the Precious”.

Following a cancer diagnosis in 2019 she retired from her position, but remained a Friend of Willingham Library. She played Scrabble there but insisted that the group should play a different game because of the unfair advantage of being a compiler; the others preferred to stick with Scrabble and invariably lost.

There is a photograph taken in 2001 at the Guardian’s offices during a party for the 80th birthday of the stalwart setter Araucaria. Wendy is instantly noticeable for being the only figure not dressed in a suit. She was proud of being one of the small minority of female setters, which is no surprise from a feminist who, when told by her bank as a newlywed that she could not retain the title “Ms” in a joint account, escalated the matter to the manager.

She set her puzzles (for the newspapers mentioned above and the Willingham News) in a custom-built green garden shed, interspersed with bird-watching: “They don’t know I’m there,” she told me, “and come really close.”

She is survived by her husband and her daughters.