Use the shuffle bound: if a well-order is partitioned into subsets of order types and , its order type is at most the Hessenberg natural sum . This follows by merging the two induced well-orders and comparing their Cantor-normal-form terms.
If both and had order type strictly below , each would have leading Cantor exponent below . Their natural sum would still be below . The shuffle bound would then give
a contradiction. Thus at least one part has order type .