A student took advantage of an “unclear” instruction by the lecturer to bring in everything he needed to pass a test on a large poster.

When Professor Reb Beatty of Maryland’s Anne Arundel Community College arrived at his accounting class to administer a test last week, he hardly could have imagined that he’d be the one getting outsmarted.

In a September 20 Facebook post that’s since gone viral, Beatty explained that he’d told his students that they were allowed to bring in a “3×5” cheat sheet to use during the test.

Beatty, however, failed to specify the unit of measurement he was referring to. A clever student noticed the loophole ― and milked it for all it was worth, Today.com reported.

First test day of the semester and as always, I allow a 3×5 notecard. Today, a student shows up with this. Sure enough, it is 3×5… feet. As precise as I am, apparently I never specified inches and therefore yes, it was allowed. Well played and lesson learned for me. @elijahbowen_ #aacc #audacious #professorlife #accounting #winner

A post shared by Reb Beatty (@rebbeatty) on Sep 19, 2017 at 1:24pm PDT

A photo shared by Beatty shows student Elijah Bowen taking his test with a “3×5” note card on his desk. Three by five feet, that is. Beatty told Today.com that he looked through his syllabus and realized he hadn’t specified “anywhere that the card had to be in inches.”

“Appreciating the fact that (a) [the student] had the intelligence to realize this shortcoming and (b) the audacity to actually put this together and bring it in, there was no reason to not allow him to use it,” the professor said.

Beatty expressed his bemused admiration for Bowen in the Facebook caption.

“Well played and lesson learned for me,” he quipped.

According to the Capital Gazette, Bowen passed the test with flying colours, getting a “high B or a low A.” The student said that he didn’t end up relying too much on his gigantic crib sheet.

“I had to refer to the card only a couple of times, it was very big,” Bowen told the newspaper. “It was more comical than anything.”