Wendy Law obituary

Ingenious crossword setter who compiled the weekly quiptic in the Guardian under the pseudonym Hectence

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.