Well, here's my approach. I include some diagnostic information (the word thus far and the guesses left), and I only subtract a guess when a letter is not found.

# size: 42 * 3 = 126
#23456789_123456789_123456789_123456789_12

# @ARGV = (phrase, guesses)
$g=pop;@x=split//,pop;@s{@x}=(_)x@x;$"="";
while($g){print"@s{@x} $g:";<>=~/./;$s{$&}
=$&;$g-="@x"!~$&;"@s{@x}"=~/_/&&exit}die@x
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Jeff[japhy]Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker.
s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;