Sphinx NEAR and << issues

Question

I'm looking for a pattern where Word 1 is near AND before Word 2. So my basic query was like

(Word1 << Word 2) (Word1 NEAR\2 Word2)

Which will naturally match

• bla bla Word1 Word2
• bla bla Word1 and Word2

but not match

• bla bla Word2 Word1
• bla bla Word1 bla bla. Bla bla bla. Word2 bla bla.

The problem is it DOES match

• bla bla Word1. Bla bla bla Word2 Word1.

is that matches both the NEAR/1 and the << conditions though not in the way I intended.

Is there any other operator/logic I can use to negate the match in the last example?

Answer 1

The closest I can think is

"Word1 word2" | "word1 * word2"