Starting a counter in mediawiki without extension

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Say you want to count like this in mediawiki (not starting at 1):

1. Three
   Four
   Five

The internet tells you it's not possible natively and that you need an extension. Here's an ugly hack to do it anyway! (keeping the # rather than going full HTML).

<div style="color:white;">
# <ol start=3><div style="color:black; position:relative; left:-50px;">
# Three
# Four
# Five</div></ol></div>

It's ugly and could break your document! Use with care under desperate circumstances! Here's an example with the multicol template:

The Platonic Universe Arithmetic and Algebra Logic and Sets Complex Numbers Vectors Functions Infinities Infinitesimals Composite and Inverses Taylor Expansions

Bra and Kets Integrals Basis Linear Functions Inverses and Determinants Eigensystems Fourier Series Differential Equations Wronskians Jacobians The Equations of Physics

which gives me a nicely-ordered, neatly-displayed list of my Mathematics's Wolverhampton lectures of Physics. Fourier Series are covered in Lecture 17!

Here's a template of how to get this:

<pre> {{multicol}} # item 1 # item 2 {{multicol-break}} <div style="color:white;"> # <ol start=3><div style="color:black; position:relative; left:-50px;"> # item 3 # item 4</div></ol></div> {{multicol-end}} </pre>

— Fabrice • 10:10, 25 January 2021