No angst Ratch. I was just interested to establish what values for I1 and I2 you could specify and still solve for practical values of ri. In my schematic, of post 31, call the current of CIRCUIT #1, I1 and the current of CIRCUIT #2, I2.
Using simultaneous equations and all that you end up with ri = ( [I1*1]-[I2*4])/ (I2-I1).
From this equation you can see that:
(1) if I1 = I2 the denominator will be zero and the numerator will be -3, so ri will be minus infinity.
(2) if I1 is less than I2 the denominator will be positive and the numerator will be negative so ri will be negative.
Thus I1 must be more than I2 for the solution to produce a (real) positive value for re.
That is all.
spec