Rambam's Extra Teiku

When giving Sunday’s daf, Bava Batra 103, I referenced various points in my Jewish Link article about the daf,

One point I mentioned is something in footnote 3:

Actually, Rashbam interjects ואם תמצי לומר between each question, and may base himself on a manuscript. If so, some Rishonim treat a chain of אם תמצי לומר as accepting the preceding query as true, with only the final teiku as unresolved.

That is, in Rabbi Yirmeyah’s questions about different rock formations in a field, does one lead to another, or are they parallel questions. And, IIRC, it is Rambam who says this. Now, if Rambam agrees that it does go in increased order of difficulty, would an implied im timtzei lomar work the same way as an explicit one? I should think so.

So Leeber, one of the people in the daf chabura, checked out the Rambam, and saw that he had listed all of them on the same level, meaning that they were all teiku. Thus:

הָיוּ נִבְלָעִין רֻבָּן בְּמִעוּטָהּ אוֹ מִעוּטָן בְּרֻבָּהּ. אוֹ שֶׁהָיוּ מֻחְלָקִין כְּמוֹ חוּט שָׁוֶה אוֹ כְּמוֹ עִגּוּל אוֹ כְּמוֹ מְשֻׁלָּשׁ אוֹ שֶׁהָיוּ בַּצְּדָדִין אוֹ שֶׁהָיוּ דֶּרֶךְ עֲקַלָּתוֹן. כָּל אֵלּוּ סָפֵק וְהַמּוֹצִיא מֵחֲבֵרוֹ עָלָיו הָרְאָיָה. וְכֵן אִם הָיוּ עָפָר מִלְּמַעְלָה וְסֶלַע מִלְּמַטָּה אוֹ סֶלַע מִלְּמַעְלָה וְעָפָר מִלְּמַטָּה הֲרֵי זֶה סָפֵק:

All the following situations are questions left unresolved by the Talmud: The majority of the area necessary to sow four kabbim is contained in a small portion of the field, a small portion of the area necessary to sow four kabbim is contained in the majority of the field, the rocks are in a straight line, in a circle, in a triangle, they are in the shape of a star, or in a jagged line. In all these instances, because of the doubt involved, we follow the principle: One who desires to expropriate money from a colleague must prove his contention. Similarly, if there is earth on top and a rock beneath it, or a rock on top and earth beneath it, there is an unresolved doubt among our Sages, and the above principle is followed.

He also noted that there were five items listed:

• straight line

• circle

• triangle

• star

• jagged line

Meanwhile, our text, and our diagrams, only number four. Where did the extra (triangle) case come from? Well, the Escorial manuscript has an extra one: כחצובה מהו, where a chatzuva is a tripod in modern Hebrew.

This is between ke-shir and ke-shura. I think something like haplography is in play. Since כשיר and כשורה are similarly spelled, some scribe skipped over the middle word.