Reply To: This Has Nothing to do With Techeiles PBA

And once I’m on this thread again, a potential answer to the original question of why there is no problem of dayo in the kal vachomer (although I don’t think it works within the Medrash Shmuel):

Tosafos in Kiddushin 10b says:

?????? ????? ????? ???? ??? ?????? ??? ??? ???? ???? ????? ??? ??? ???? ??? ???? ??? ??”? ??? ??? ???? ?? ????? ?”? ??”? ??? ???? ??? ??? ?????? ??? ???? ??? ???? ???? ??? ???? ????? ?? ??”? ??? ??? ???? ???

i.e. the concept of dayo is only applicable in a case where you are making a kal vachomer to prove something not mentioned by the Torah, but where the Torah does mention something something and the kal vachomer is just explaining what the Torah was referring to, dayo is not an issue. In our situation, the chiddush of the kal vachomer is not that you have to honor your teacher; the chiddush is that for the purposes of honoring your teacher, even someone who only taught you one letter qualifies. So the kal vachomer is just defining the gedarim of a preexisting concept, hence dayo is not applicable.