First of all that doesn't work because shift returns a reference. You need it to dereference the first element into an array. Secondly you know I love a challenge..like 76 characters: 
sub o{
($c,$s,$")=@_;sub t{$_=pop;s/./~0+index"@$c",$&/ges;$_}sort{t($a)cmp t
+$b}@$s
}

[download]
(I have to waste 3 on removing spaces, dang.)

UPDATE
In 5.6.x it appears you need to spend another character: 

sub o{
($c,$s,$")=@_;sub t{$_=pop;s/./1e9+index"@$c",$&/ges;$_}sort{t($a)cmp 
+t$b}@$s
}

[download]

UPDATE 2
Saving another character..back to 76. 

sub o{
($c,$s,$")=@_;sub t{s/./1e9+index"@$c",$&/ges;$_}sort{t($_=$a)cmp t$_=
+$b}@$s
}

[download]

UPDATE 3
Throwing in tadman's improvement, 75: 

sub o{
($c,*w,$")=@_;sub t{s/./1e9+index"@$c",$&/ges;$_}sort{t($_=$a)cmp t$_=
+$b}@w
}

[download]
(Note that chr returning 2 chars wouldn't make Unicode come out right. Hence I am keeping the 1e9 trick.)

In reply to Re (tilly) 3: Golf: Arbitrary Alphabetical Sorting by tilly
in thread Golf: Arbitrary Alphabetical Sorting by Masem

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