Odd; I thought the "numb" meaning was definitely for 麻, since its meanings include "hemp" and "marijuana".
That's what I meant! 麻 is "numb" (less serious), 痲 is "paralysed" (more serious).
[simplified versions of characters] Is that what the "痲 / 麻" on the CantoDict page implies?
Yep! Annoyingly, this makes it pretty much impossible to Google to see if anyone actually does spell mapo tofu as "痲婆豆腐", since when you Google for Chinese characters that have a simplified version it helpfully considers the traditional and simplified ones to be equivalent (which normally is what you want, just not in this case).
Re: Variant spellings
That's what I meant! 麻 is "numb" (less serious), 痲 is "paralysed" (more serious).
[simplified versions of characters]
Yep! Annoyingly, this makes it pretty much impossible to Google to see if anyone actually does spell mapo tofu as "痲婆豆腐", since when you Google for Chinese characters that have a simplified version it helpfully considers the traditional and simplified ones to be equivalent (which normally is what you want, just not in this case).