The answer is EASY, four letters. It is the fill that plain wording wants, and it beats the alternatives often enough to be worth writing first. MERE also takes four squares, BASIC and PLAIN take five, and NAIVE covers the less flattering sense that shows up in harder grids.
Four meanings hide behind one clue word
Simple is a setter’s gift because it splits four ways and the clue gives you no help at all. It can mean easy, as in a simple task. It can mean plain or unadorned, as in a simple dress. It can mean mere, as in a simple matter of paperwork, where the word is doing nothing but shrinking whatever follows it. And it can mean naive or slow witted, which is the sense behind simpleton. Four senses, four different families of answer, and the only thing that separates them is the number of blanks in front of you.
Notice that two of those senses are compliments and two are not. Plain and unadorned can be praise, particularly about design or cooking, while mere is faintly dismissive and naive is worse. That spread is why the same word can feel warm in one puzzle and unkind in another, so read whatever else the clue gives you before deciding which way the setter is pointing.
Running the field from four squares to nine
| Letters | Answer | Sense in play |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | EASY | Not difficult |
| 4 | MERE | Nothing more than |
| 5 | BASIC | Stripped to essentials |
| 5 | PLAIN | Undecorated |
| 5 | NAIVE | Unworldly, of a person |
| 7 | ARTLESS | Without guile or technique |
| 9 | UNADORNED | Long slots, the decoration sense |
Why EASY turns up more than any of its rivals
Constructors are not only choosing a meaning, they are choosing letters that will not wreck the crossing entries. EASY opens with two vowels and closes on a Y, which is exactly the shape that plays well at the end of an across entry, because a terminal Y gives the down clues something workable rather than a dead consonant. The word also has a second life as a crossword term of art, since an early week puzzle is described as easy by the same people who put the word in the grid. That double duty gives editors plenty of angles, which is why you will meet this entry far more often than the four letters alone would suggest.
MERE is the one that actually competes with it for the same four squares, and the two feel nothing alike once you see the distinction. EASY is about difficulty; MERE is about scale, and it always shrinks the noun it is attached to. A mere formality is not an easy formality, it is an unimportant one. If the clue wording leans toward nothing more than or no better than, write MERE. If it leans toward untaxing, write EASY.
When simple was an insult
The unflattering sense is old and it has not entirely gone. Simple once meant lacking in cunning, then lacking in sense, which is where simpleton comes from, and why the nursery rhyme character Simple Simon is not being praised. Modern editors tread lightly here, but the sense survives in grids through NAIVE at five squares and SIMPLETON at nine. If your clue reads “Simple soul” or “Simple minded sort” rather than plain “Simple”, that is the family you want.
Before it was an adjective, a simple was a medicine
There is a noun sense that older puzzles still use. A simple was a plant taken as a remedy on its own, without being blended into a compound preparation, and someone who gathered them was a simpler. That is why you sometimes meet SIMPLES clued as old herbal remedies, or a clue pointing at a herb garden rather than at difficulty. It is a small corner of the word, but it is a corner setters know about, and it explains a plural S that otherwise looks wrong on an adjective.
Attached to a noun it becomes a term of art
Simple also works as the first half of a set phrase, and each phrase has a fixed technical meaning that a setter can clue without any synonym involved. A simple machine is one of the basic devices of classical mechanics, the lever, pulley, wheel and axle, inclined plane, wedge and screw. Simple interest is calculated on the original principal only, while compound interest is calculated on the interest as well. A simple sentence has one independent clause and no second one attached. If your clue reads Simple followed by a noun, stop hunting for a synonym and start recalling the definition, because the answer is nearly always vocabulary from that field.
