Betweenle Unlimited

A 5-letter word is hidden somewhere in a dictionary sorted from A to Z. You start with the whole dictionary, type a word, and the game tells you whether the hidden word comes before or after it. Your word becomes a new boundary, the gap shrinks, and you keep going until you land on the hidden word or run out of guesses. The number on the board counts the words still in the gap.

Yes. Press Next puzzle and a new hidden word appears at once, at the same level. There is no daily limit and no sign-up. The hidden words come from our own lists (858 on Easy, 2,022 on Medium and 2,717 on Hard), and the ones you played most recently are skipped. If you want one shared word a day, switch to Daily.

A word from the middle of the dictionary. Our list has 6,327 words, and LOCUS sits right in the middle of it, so whichever side the hidden word is on, you throw away about half the list with one guess. After that, take the word in the middle of what is left. A word that starts with a letter near the start or end of the alphabet, such as an A or a Z, tells you much less.

Because the hidden word is already known to be between them. A word outside the gap cannot be the answer, and the game would not learn anything new from it, so it is not accepted. The game tells you which card it has to come after or before, and the try does not count against you.

Easy gives you 14 guesses, Medium 12 and Hard 10. A win in fewer guesses is better, and your count out of the maximum is in the share text. Playing the middle word of the gap every time finds any word in 13 guesses or fewer, which is one more than Medium allows and three more than Hard allows, so on those two levels you need some feel for which words are likely.

Because the dictionary is sorted by the first letter, then the second, and so on. PINCH and WINCH differ by one letter, yet 2,135 words sit between them in our list. Judge distance by how far apart the words are in A-to-Z order, not by how alike they look. The number on the board is that distance for your current gap.

Two things: which words can be hidden and how many guesses you get. Easy hides one of the most common words (858 of them) and gives 14 guesses. Medium hides one of 2,022 words and gives 12. Hard hides one of 2,717, including less common ones, and gives 10. What you may type is the same on every level: all 6,327 words.

It accepts the 6,327 five-letter words in our list, which comes from SCOWL (Spell Checker Oriented Word Lists, by Kevin Atkinson), keeping the common ones and leaving out names and words that do not belong in a family game. Very rare words and proper names are refused with the note Not in the word list, which costs no guess. The list is our own, so it is not the same as the original game's.

Something else. The Dles is an independent site. We wrote this version ourselves, with our own word list, board and levels, and it is not affiliated with or endorsed by the maker of the original Betweenle.

The original game's own site credits Nebula Bytes, and it links to Android and iOS apps (betweenle.com). A game directory lists the same publisher (Playlin). This site is not run by them.

As its own site describes it, the original offers one daily word with a countdown to the next, plus a set of fixed levels, and points to its app for unlimited play (betweenle.com). A game directory also says the app has daily and unlimited modes (GameBrain). Here you can play as many words as you like in the browser.

Yes, in this browser. There is no sign-up. Your Daily streak, best times and the word you are in the middle of are saved in this browser only, so clearing site data or switching browsers starts you fresh.