Some further "challenges" you might consider WRT this and other such exercises:

• Use warnings and strictures:  use warnings; use strict;
  (Although you may already have used them and just not included the statements in the posted example code, which looks like a piece of a function definition.)
• Use lexical variables (although again, you may simply have not included the definitions of these variables in the example).
• Define lexicals as close to the point of use and in as narrow a scope as is reasonable.
• Factor common sub-statements. Any time you see things like repeated  clear_the_screen();  print ...;  chomp ...; code phrases, you know you've got a candidate for (re)factoring. Sometimes it's necessary to perpetrate code like that shown in the OP, but as this is a learning exercise, take some time for (possibly extensive) re-working.
• Consider posting small, complete and executable code examples. Wrap more lengthy examples in  <readmore> ... </readmore> tags, or perhaps post the complete example on your public scratchpad and make references to sub-sections of code for discussion.

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