If I set an input var to type text - it appears as a wide text input but if I set it programatically to type 4 it is narrow
Am I using the wrong number?
no, that's right and intentional. For programmatical text-type setting I've even chosen multi-line text without blank-indicator dots. If instead you want just a single line, use number zero.
Well it may be intentional but I'll argue that it's not right 
I was after the wide inputs in a program built reporter as it handles alignment much better than an any slot
Back to drawing board
Well, Simon, in that case, why don't you just declare the slots to be of type text? You can and are allowed to build your own blocks without resorting to metaprogramming, you know, the way everybody else in every other programming language does
One reason why someone would want this, is to be able to tell the user that there should be 3 values, and also allow the user to drop a list onto the slots, not requiring them to use 3 (item ( v) of @list) blocks. Kind of in the same vein as spread operations in python and javascript.
This is the very first time I've wanted to construct a block using meta programming
I'd like to be able to construct a matrix reporter of arbitrary size
This is for a Futoshiki game I'm making
Unfortunately it doesn't work as well as a manually crafted one because the slot widths change when you enter a value
But thanks for the code on constructing one - I'll think I use this variation to get one that doesn't look too ragged
Now I come to think about it, the text input version wouldn't scale much beyond 6x6 or so this way is better