  There is another way of answering the three central interpretive questions, one on which Parmenides’ criticisms as well as the Deductions come out as serious and valid. (This is the interpretation defended in Rickless (2007), and one aspect of which is defended, though on different grounds, in Gill (2014).) What Parmenides’ criticisms reveal is that, whether combined with the Pie Model conception of partaking or with Paradigmatism, Plato’s middle period theory of forms is internally inconsistent. It turns out that there are three principles the abandonment of which would eliminate all inconsistencies apart from the Greatest Difficulty: Purity-F, Uniqueness, and No Causation by Contraries. Careful logical analysis of the second part of the dialogue then reveals that the Deductions establish not only that the forms posited by the middle period theory exist, but also that Purity-F, Uniqueness, and No Causation by Contraries are all false. It is then reasonable to suppose that Plato meant the reader to recognize that the proper way to save the forms is by abandoning these three basic assumptions.  And, importantly, this can be done without abandoning the most important principles at the heart of the middle period theory, namely One-over-Many and Separation. The aptly-named Greatest Difficulty is then left as a challenge for future work.