Wendy Law
British crossword compiler (1960–2026)
Wendy Anne Law (29 July 1960 – 4 June 2026) was a British crossword compiler and librarian. She created cryptic crosswords for The Guardian under the pseudonym Hectence, creating 217 crosswords over 27 years, and for The Financial Times under the pseudonym Zamorca. She was the most prolific setter for The Guardian's 'Quiptic' puzzle and, at the time of her death, was the only setter to have appeared every year.
Early life and career
Law was born on 29 July 1960 in Manchester to Derek Sherwin and his wife Pat (nee Smethurst). Her father worked as a chemist and the family moved to Melton Mowbray for his work. Her mother would do a cryptic crossword every day from the Daily Mail and later the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Times. Law and her father would help her mother when she got stuck. Law attended King Edward VII School and then Leeds University. She first studied art history before changing to study English and Italian and graduated in 1982.
Law worked in administrative jobs at the Ministry of Agriculture and the Official Receiver, before starting to work for South Cambridgeshire district council in education finance.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wendy Law” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.