The following finds a solution in O(1) time after a very quick O(N) setup: 

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $alphabet = uc('ADEFGMSTV');

my $N = length($alphabet);
my $L = $N - 1;

my @ltr_lkup = $alphabet =~ /./g;
my %idx_lkup = map { substr($alphabet, $_, 1) => $_ } 0..$L;

sub tupple { return join '', @ltr_lkup[ sort { $a <=> $b } @_ ]; }

{
    my ($input) = @ARGV
        or die("usage: $0 string\n");

    $input = uc($input);

    my @counts;
    while ($input =~ /(.)/g) {
        defined($idx_lkup{$1})
            or die("'$1' not in alphabet\n");

        ++$counts[ $idx_lkup{$1} ];
    }

    $counts[$_] ||= 0 for 0..$L;  # Avoid warnings.

    my @extracted;
    for my $i (0..$L) {
        if ($counts[$i] >= 4) {
            $counts[$i] %= 4;
            push @extracted, tupple( ($i) x 4 );
        }

        if ($counts[$i] > 0) {
            die("No solution\n")
                if $i+3 > $L;

            my $instances = $counts[$i];
            for (0..3) {
                die("No solution\n")
                    if $counts[$i+$_] < $instances;
                $counts[$i+$_] -= $instances;
            }
            push @extracted, tupple( $i+0 .. $i+3 );
        }
    }

    print(join(';', @extracted), "\n");
}

[download]
$ perl single.pl AAAAADDDDDEFFGMMSSTVVVVV
AAAA;ADEF;DDDD;FGMS;MSTV;VVVV

$ perl single.pl AADDDEEEEFFFFGGMMMMMMMMMMSTV
ADEF;DEFG;EFGM;MMMM;MSTV

$ perl single.pl AAAADDDDEEEEFFFFGGGG
AAAA;DDDD;EEEE;FFFF;GGGG

[download]

It wouldn't take that much work to make this find all the permutations because the only time you'll have permutations is when you have something of the form 

nnnnooooppppqqqq
    Solution 1: (nnnn,oooo,pppp,qqqq)
    Solution 2: (nopq)

[download]

In reply to Re: finding tuples (single solution) by ikegami
in thread finding tuples by Anonymous Monk

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