No more than

Once upon a time, there was a kingdom which was ruled by a wise and just king. The king wanted to test the intelligence of his people and organized a crossword competition in the kingdom. The winner of the competition would get a big reward.

The crossword had some tricky clues and one of them was, “No more than“. Many people thought the answer was “only” or “just“. But a poor farmer who lived in the outskirts of the kingdom had a different idea. He looked at the clue and thought of his own life, how he lived a simple life with limited resources. He was reminded of the small pond near his farm where he would take his cows for water. He realized that the answer to the clue was “mere“. His cows drank “no more than” a mere amount of water from the pond.

On the day of the competition, the farmer’s answer was the correct one, and he won the competition. He was amazed to see how a simple life lesson helped him to solve the clue. The king was impressed with his answer and rewarded him with a big sum of money. The farmer became famous in the kingdom, and people started calling him the “wise farmer“.

From that day onward, whenever the people in the kingdom would come across the clue “No more than,” they would always remember the wise farmer and his simple yet genius answer, “mere“.