Is Homer in charge of the episode tally?

Not that it’s on par with, oh, the Great Quiz Show Scandal of 1959 or the Great Bobby Ewing Death Hoax on “Dallas,” but Fox’s count of episodes of “The Simpsons” seems to be a little bit ... suspicious.

The network has been touting Sunday night’s new episode, “Don’t Fear the Roofer,” in which Ray Romano guest stars as a roofing contractor who’s stereotypically hard to nail down, as the animated sitcom’s milestone 350th. But as some hard-core “Simpsons”-ites have taken the trouble to point out, the numbers don’t quite square.

What’s up? A little May-sweeps math? A Fox representative said it is definitely No. 350. But if you go to the official episode guide at www.thesimpsons.com and count forward from the similarly ballyhooed 300th episode, televised Feb. 16, 2003, then Sunday’s installment is No. 349.

On the other hand, if you count from the very beginning of the series, the episode Fox labeled the “300th” appears to have been the 302nd, which would make Sunday’s episode No. 351. Aye, carumba!

Perhaps Stephen Hawking -- who’s also in Sunday’s episode, explaining a bit about black holes to the Simpsons, Ned Flanders and Dr. Hibbert -- could unravel this mathematical conundrum.

Then again, it just might make the great physicist go, “D’oh!”