Too Many Posts on Front Page – No Solutions Working

Hello, I’ve gone through all the possible solutions posted here and elsewhere and for the life of me I can’t get my front page posts down to six or seven. I’ve changed the php query syntax to show as few as 2 posts, and it’s still around 14. I’ve disabled plugins and nothing doing. Ditto for changing the values in Reading under Settings. I’ve tried two different plugins, Different Posts Per Page and Custom Post Limits and no way Jose. PUHLEEZEE, someone help. This is making a substantial difference to the load time of the home page. Thanks.