2) Not being one of the "sub geniuses" myself, I don't think you can get by using last; inside of a sub routine and at the moment I can't think of a different way to go about doing that.

If you look at the original sketch I posted, you'll see that there are two last statements, one for each of the two loops; they both occur in the main body of the program. But most of the script's work is handled by subroutines like ask_next_question(), check_answer(), update_score(), etc.