What I find funny about "why use many word when few word do trick?" is that it's only slightly shorter than the regular "why use many words when few words do the trick?"

I always figured that was part of the joke, because a writer came up with it, and a writer would know (I assume?).

less word better(, many words bad)

The latter is not a complete alternative, it is ambiguously conflating vocabulary scale with word count, and also, it is not as funny