I don't mean this to sound too harsh, but you would benefit from a little more time spent perusing the rules book. This should have been easy to find.

He should have just gone with Bedlam. That makes it easy.:D

Number, Letters, Exception???
 

My partner questioned me about this in our pregame last night, in reference to an odd play from his previous game. I knew the rule but just couldn't put my finger on the citation. I looked right at this rule last night after my game and missed it. You've got to admit, with numbers, letters, an exception, and having to go up and down, and back and forth, within the rule, it's a pretty convoluted exception to a pretty convoluted rule. Easy to understand, but hard to put into rule language.