| You’re right. If you read the crappy first reply I deleted, please accept my apologies. That said, there are still two separate reasons why “least” might be acceptable, the first reason that I used above is weaker, while the second reason is stronger IMO. 1- not all changes are equivalent. The main factor most people care about, I assume, is total trip time. It’s definitely possible to have two routes to a destination where one route has more transfers but the shortest trip time. In that specific case, “least changes” can mean something different than “fewest changes”. I’m stretching a little, and I have no idea if any pair of TFL routes does this, but purely from a language perspective, it might not be as black and white as you say. 2- Use of “least” to compare countable quantities has existed for a long time. Yes there’s a rule of thumb for fewest vs least, but this is by no means absolute. “This rule is simple enough and looks easy enough to follow, but it's not accurate for all usage. The fact is that less is also sometimes used to refer to number among things that are counted. “Origins of The Fewer vs Less Rule “This isn't an example of how modern English is going to the dogs. Less has been used this way for well over a thousand years—nearly as long as there's been a written English language. But for more than 200 years almost every usage writer and English teacher has declared such use to be wrong. The received rule seems to have originated with the critic Robert Baker, who expressed it not as a law but as a matter of personal preference. Somewhere along the way—it's not clear how—his preference was generalized and elevated to an absolute, inviolable rule.” https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/fewer-vs-less |