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Here's a little literary quiz from The New Yorker Name-Drop page. Let us know how many clues you needed to solve.

Clue 1:  (view spoiler)[I began my career as a journalist, and my early publications included “Ninety Days Behind the Iron Curtain,�� a serialized account of a trip I took to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. (hide spoiler)]

Clue 2:   (view spoiler)[My grandfather, a metallurgist and jeweller, often made small gold fish in his workshop—as did one of my most famous characters. (hide spoiler)]

Clue 3:   (view spoiler)[When President Juan Manuel Santos won the el Peace Prize in 2016, he became the second person from my country to win a Nobel; I was the first, in 1982. (hide spoiler)]

Clue 4:   (view spoiler)[One of my novels begins on the morning of the death of its protagonist, Santiago Nasar; another opens with Dr. Juvenal Urbino remarking that the scent of bitter almonds always reminds him of unrequited love. (hide spoiler)]

Clue 5:   (view spoiler)[I first wrote about the fictional town of Macondo in my 1955 story, “Leaf Storm��; twelve years later, I wrote a novel chronicling the founders of that town, the Buendía family, across seven generations. (hide spoiler)]

Clue 6:   (view spoiler)[Much of my work, including that novel, “One Hundred Years of Solitude,�� is associated with the genre of magical realism. (hide spoiler)]

Answer:   (view spoiler)[Gabriel García Márquez (hide spoiler)]

3 clues - though I wasn't 100% sure.

Lljones wrote: "Here's a little literary quiz from The New Yorker Name-Drop page. Let us know how many clues you needed to solve.

Clue 1:  [spoilers removed]

Clue 2:   [spoilers removed]

Clue 3:   [spoilers rem..."

I play this on the New Yorker site every day - I got this one on the third clue as well.

Three

Bill wrote: "I got this one on the third clue as well."

Yeah, me too, though I thought of the name on the second clue.

Five clues for me. They practically had to tell me his name!

Lljones wrote: "Here's a little literary quiz from The New Yorker Name-Drop page. Let us know how many clues you needed to solve.

Clue 1:  [spoilers removed]

Clue 2:   [spoilers removed]

Clue 3:   [spoilers rem..."

Well, I could guess No. 6.

Lljones wrote: "Bill wrote: "I got this one on the third clue as well."

Yeah, me too, though I thought of the name on the second clue."

I found that the best strategy for me is to take a shot as soon a definite name comes to mind. I think I've never been wrong in those cases.

On those puzzles where I'm sure I don't know the answer - yesterday for example - I used to let the time run out, but now I take a wild, almost certainly wrong, guess in order to get to the answer. My wild guesses have never been the right answer.

I usually do so disastrously badly at the quizzes here that I (sadly) felt quite proud to have done as well as several others of you! 😊

Love the format! I was lucky in that I'd just re-read the intro to (view spoiler)[ Of Love and Other Demons (hide spoiler)] a week or two ago, where the author mentions their days as journalist, so that's where my mind went immediately at Clue 1. Clue 2 was of no help whatsoever, Clue 3 confirmed I was on the right track. Clue 4 lifted any remaining doubts.

It was clear after Q3 that we were dealing with someone from South America, but as I have little familiarity with authors from the continent, I guessed the wrong one!

The list included very little that I'm familiar with.

OK, I'm posting today's quiz (hint: not a literary figure, as is pretty obvious from the outset) because the first clue really set me thinking in the wrong direction and I'm wondering if others will have that problem. I needed five clues to get the answer. (Note: as on the New Yorker site, clues are numbered from 6 to 1, reflecting the number of points awarded if the correct answer is given after that clue.)

CLUE 6
(view spoiler)[Valentino enlisted me to direct a production of Verdi’s “La Traviata,�� staged at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, for which he and his creative directors designed many of the costumes. (hide spoiler)]

CLUE 5
(view spoiler)[I was slated to direct a live-action version of “The Little Mermaid,�� but I left the project after roughly a year, citing a lack of creative control. (hide spoiler)]

CLUE 4
(view spoiler)[Much of my 2010 film, about the relationship between a movie star and his eleven-year-old daughter, takes place at the Chateau Marmont. (hide spoiler)]

CLUE 3
(view spoiler)[While shooting my third feature film, whose soundtrack includes music by New Order and the Strokes, I was granted unprecedented access to Versailles. (hide spoiler)]

CLUE 2
(view spoiler)[Though my performance as Mary in “The Godfather: Part III�� was widely maligned upon the film’s release, Pauline Kael described me as “a lovely and unusual presence�� who “gives the film a breath of life.�� (hide spoiler)]

CLUE 1
(view spoiler)[After acting in that movie, which was directed by my father, I became an acclaimed director myself; my movies include “The Virgin Suicides,�� “Lost in Translation,�� and “Marie Antoinette.�� (hide spoiler)]

Answer:(view spoiler)[Sofia Coppola (hide spoiler)]

Machenbach wrote: "I got this quite quickly, but did momentarily stumble at “wait now, Rudolph Valentino was a costume designer too?��"

The name Valentino had only one referent to me, so I was thinking of (view spoiler)[an entirely different era. (hide spoiler)]

Took me 5 clues, too... I'm not familiar with this person's work apart from reading reviews etc.

I got it on the 3rd clue (Clue 4), but also got confused by Valentino.