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I know what you mean Murky. Normally we’d tidy it up with an index law. But the layout of the digits (pre-tidy) evidences the thinking.

I have just an eight letter word for the source taken from the first letters of 21ac to 28ac inclusive, taken in normal clue order.

Since starting the listener in the summer, this was by far the hardest I’ve attempted (more so even than the numbers a couple of weeks ago). So I’m well chuffed to have completed it. Hats off and thanks to Shenanigans for an incredibly intricate and complex puzzle. And thank you to my lovely mum and her carte blanche grid fill prowess. It’ll be a joint submission from us. It’d be a kick in the teeth to get Brewer’s though... a brand new BRB is what we want :-D

Merenz, I'm no mathematician, but you appear to be saying that the numerical expression as represented in three rows is perfectly valid. I'm not going to argue with that. It does mean that the two representations are now numerically equivalent, and I suppose the title is a guide in case of doubt whether it's the smaller or the larger number that is required.

I agree that the word "contains" in the preamble is potentially misleading. How odd that someone goes to great lengths to construct an intricate puzzle and then the wording in the instructions is somewhat careless. Sometimes, though, I think preambles are deliberately ambiguous.

It would have been better to say that two representations of an unclued word in the completed grid must be highlighted. Or even say that it is a 10-letter word.

Orson, that is a far better wording for the preamble.

Ambiguity should be the preserve of clues. Preambles should be totally free of it. That's not to say they must be totally explicit, but they should not be open to an alternative interpretation that could be justified.

murky, please give up on the idea that the preamble is ambiguous. It’s not. The corrections spell out the source’s definition of the ten-letter theme verbatim, confirmed by the two separate highlighted representations. Any other suggestion is wrong.

I think we need to clear up any confusion!

Is the theme 6 or 10 letters? From the preamble I have assumed 6 because of the word “contains”.
My mathematical representation is in the 3rd and 4th rows and the word itself in the 7th row making a total of 11 highlighted cells.
Does anyone else agree or have I got it completely wrong!

Unclued, there is an undoubted ambiguity in the word 'contains', but if one takes the the theme and the representations to be the six-letter word, one has to assume that the the existence of other features in the preamble are traps, since they are clearly there by design, not accidental. But since the title of the puzzle supports the larger number and longer word, they can't be wrong.
I raised the issue of two possible alternatives, but Orson and others are right that only one of these is the intended solution. In cases like these it's best to ask oneself which one is completely justified, taking everything into consideration (title, extract from misprints, unclued answer), and which could conceivably marked wrong.

An additional consideration is that if the smaller number is the theme there are two instances of the word, vertical and horizontal, so it would not be clear which to highlight.

Unclued. Look up the ten letter word in wikipaedia. All will be explained and enable you to reconcile the 3 occurrences. Why look for trouble? The solution jumps out at you.

If the smaller number was the theme, why would the corrections give the verbatim definition of the larger number in the source? It makes no sense. Remember that the word “contain” can mean “comprise”. The entry has to be the ten letter word, for symmetry. There is no reason why the theme must be a subset of that and thus the shorter word.

I can understand now that people have been misled into thinking that it must. Perhaps that was deliberate. Either way, only one solution will be marked correct. And it is the larger one.

I think the confusion arises because the seventh row must be read in conjunction with the eighth row. The first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry will enlighten. And I'm still not a robot grrr...