Advice on publishing original theorems with easy proofs I got a rejection recently on a short paper that gave a fairly short proof that a conjecture of a well-known mathematician was false.  The reviewer said that “while the results are new and interesting,” “the proofs are fine, but not very difficult, and the techniques are not new.”  Nonetheless, the arguments previously evaded some top people in the field who were interested in the topic.  My question is, to what kinds of mathematics journals should one submit significant results whose proofs involve some clever trick rather than a revolutionary method?  Also, should one not strive to find the most transparent form of a mathematical argument?
There's a good chance the rejection is because your results are not interesting enough for the journal. In other words, the journal is looking for not only new and interesting results, but also complicated proofs and/or new techniques.
So: submit to another, probably less prestigious journal. Alternatively, you can submit to a similarly-ranked journal and hope the peer review process results in acceptance, which is entirely possible, because this particular reject reason is a judgement call and different people will come to different recommendations.