I was playing with the widgetwords konfabulator widget and wrote a script that calculates the top scoring words for each round. The way the game is played is you get a set of letters and have to come up with as many dictionary words as possible with those letters. Of course, to calculate the top scoring words requires a search like you are requesting. My main constraint is that the word has to be between 3 and 8 characters.

#!/usr/bin/perl

# authored by Josh Goldberg <josh@3io.com>
# Jan 10, 2004
#
# ARGV[0] is a string of letters, ARGV[1] is a dictionary file.
# the script searches the dictionary for all combinations/permutations
# of the ARGV[0] that have at least three characters and no character 
+is 
# repeated.  
# Originally authored for use with the widgetWords konfabulator widget
+.

use Algorithm::Permute;
$|=1;

$resultstoprint = 7;
$defaultDictionary = "joshWordList.txt";
@tilePoints = ( 100,300,300,200,100,400,200,400,100,800,500,100,300,10
+0,100,300,1000,100,100,100,100,400,400,800,400,1000 );
$vowels = ( 65,69,73,79,85,89 );
$common = ( 84,78,83,72,82,68,76 );

sub combinations {
    my @list= @_;
    my @pick= (0) x @list;
    return sub {
        my $i= 0;
        while( 1 < ++$pick[$i] ) {
            $pick[$i]= 0;
            return if $#pick < ++$i;
        }
        return @list[ grep $pick[$_], 0..$#pick ];
    };
}

$file = $ARGV[1] || $defaultDictionary;
die "missing dictionary" unless -e $file;
@letters = split //,lc $ARGV[0];

# permute all combinations of 3-8 letters
$combinations = combinations(@letters);
while (@comb = $combinations->() ) {
    next unless scalar @comb > 2;
    $p = new Algorithm::Permute(\@comb);
    while (@res = $p->next) {
        local $"='';
        $wordlist{"@res"} = 1;
    }
}

open LIST, "<$file";
while (<LIST>) {
    chomp;
    $dict{$_} = 1;
}
foreach $word (keys %wordlist) {
    if (exists $dict{$word}) {
        push @matches, $word;
        @res = split //,$word;
        $score = 0;
        for (@res) {
            $score += $tilePoints[ord(uc $_)-65];
        }
        $len = scalar @res;
        $score += $len * 50;
        $score += 400 if $len == 8;
        $wordlist{$word} = $score;
    }
}
close LIST;

print "top Eight Words:\n";
@sorted = reverse sort {$wordlist{$a} <=> $wordlist{$b} } @matches;
for (@sorted) {
    if ($resultstoprint > 0) {
        last if $top++ > $resultstoprint;
    }
    @res = split //,$_;
    print "$_: $wordlist{$_} points\n";
}
exit 0;
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