Betweenle, anyone?

The Game Room
1

I’m wondering if anyone has tried this game. It’s similar to Wordle in that you need to solve for an unknown five letter word, but instead of being given letters that you guessed correctly, you are guided as to whether the word you chose is before or after it in the dictionary.

For today’s puzzle, I have it narrowed down to a word between OWNER and PACAS. But I cannot for the life of me think of ANY word that fits. I even used AI to generate some ideas ( that’s how I came up with PACAS, my former upper limit was PACED). It gave me some valid suggestions (that is, words that fit alphabetically, though they were unknown to me) such as PABST, PACAL, PACAN, OWNES, OWNET. But none were the solution.

I have three more guesses, but honestly I’m ready to give up. Unfortunately there is no way to forfeit the puzzle and get the answer, and I fear this loose thread will derail my whole day if don’t get an answer. Does anyone have any ideas?

2

Oxide?

3

Not OXIDE, but that did become the new lower limit.

Kind of surprised I didn’t think of that, even more surprised that AI missed it.

4

Oximeter? Oxymoron? Pablum?

5

Note the last three words of turtlescanfly’s OP quoted below:

6

Ozone ?

7

OZONE was it! Thank you

Even more surprised that I didn’t think of that ( nor did AI). Perhaps the AI takeover is further off than we thought….

8

Whoops!

Apologies for posting before coffee!