Ruthless Hill-troll shadow effect

By sappidus, in Rules questions & answers

In Across the Ettenmoors, Ruthless Hill-troll has the following shadow effect:

"Shadow: Shuffle 1 location with the safe keyword (but not its attached encounter) back into the encounter deck."

When this triggered in a game the other day, we had a safe location in play; indeed, it was the active location. We were so close to winning that I did something rare and argued for something that I'm pretty sure is totally against the spirit of the card: I said that since the shadow effect didn't specify that the safe location had to be one in play, we could just choose one of the previously explored safe locations sitting in the victory display to satisfy the effect.

We did just that. So was this totally cheating, or was the underhanded move defensible?

Never mind, I think the answer is in another active thread here... "Rule Book p. 25 - Card effects do not interact with cards in an out of play state unless the effect specifically refers to that state."

I knew there had to be something wrong... :)