I would use the following method:

while ($current{word} =~ /$letter/g) {
  substr $current{revealed}, $-[0], 1, $letter;
}
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This uses the @- array which holds the offsets of the entire match and the $1 (etc.) variables. Basically, $-[0] gives me the offset in the string we matched against where the pattern started. Since the real word and the revealed word are "identical", the offsets are the same.

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Jeff[japhy]Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker, who'd like a job (NYC-area)
s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;