I went with the first option. I was glad you gave me choices ;). The first one was exactly the behaviour I was looking for. You seen to dislike this option but I fail to see why. Here's the code I used, based on all the help in this thread: 
use strict;

my $dict = "/usr/dict/words";
my ($set, $cur, $end) = (0, 1, 2);

for my $i (1..30) {
    printf "word #%2d: \%s\n", $i, &pick_word(10);
}

sub pick_word {
    my $reqsize = shift;

    my $ret  = "";
    my $die  =  0;

    open DICT, "$dict" or die "redmist code: $!";
    seek DICT, rand(-s $dict), $set;

    <DICT>; # this get's us to the start of the next line.

    TOP: while (<DICT>) {
        ($ret = $1 and last) if /^(\w{$reqsize})$/;
    }

    if(length($ret) != $reqsize) {
        # ok, go back around
        seek DICT, 0, $set;

        # but remember we were already here ...
        die "Word too big, aaaaaaaahhhhhh!" if $die;
        $die = 1;

        goto TOP;
    }
    close DICT;

    return $ret;
}

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In reply to RE: Re: RandomFile by jettero
in thread RandomFile by jettero

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