The Guardian's obituary reports that Wendy Law, who set crosswords as Hectence, died on June 4 at 65 after cancer, and because no independent death record was recovered for this edition, the date, age and cause remain attributed to that account. [1]

Law compiled 217 Guardian quiptics over 27 years, and although the puzzle is advertised for beginners and people in a hurry, her editor, obituary writer Alan Connor, argues that accessibility did not make construction easy because it required fair clues, restrained tricks and the discipline to keep a difficult form welcoming. [1]

She began by sending sample puzzles to the Guardian in 1998, and although a note saying they would be kept on file looked like a polite rejection, one year later she learned that her first puzzle would become the fourth installment of a new weekly series, after which she also set for the Financial Times as Zamorca. [1]

The same idea of access ran through her public work, as the obituary says Law trained as a librarian, worked at Willingham village library, contributed to a talking-book service for Cambridgeshire residents with visual impairments and became a district supervisor for county libraries, retiring after a cancer diagnosis in 2019 but remaining a Friend of Willingham Library. [1]

A setter's name occupies little space above a grid, but Law's record shows the labor hidden beneath it through making conventions legible, maintaining fairness and helping people reach books in another form, so the small byline was not a small career.

-- ANNA WEBER, Berlin