Looking at your 3:11 PM version, I'd make a few more changes:

  1. You split(//,$word) twice, perhaps every time through the while loop. Move them up, prior to looping.
  2. You have @words, $words, $word, and %word. Below, I ditch the temporary $words, and introduce @chars and %chars. 
...
#my $words = @words;  # just use (scalar @words)
chomp(my $word = lc($words[int(rand(scalar @words))]));
my @chars = split//,$word;
my %chars = map { $_ => 1 } @chars;
...
while ($turns > 0) {
   ...
   foreach my $char (@chars) { # split not needed
   ...
   else {
      #my %word = map{$_=>1}split(//,$word); # not needed
      if (exists($chars{$guess})) {  # changed %word to %chars
   ...

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Minor update - tweaked my 'foreach' comment

In reply to Re: Looking for pointers or optimizations. by hbm
in thread Looking for pointers or optimizations. by thmsdrew

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