Instead of

## Find the number of blanks
while ($letters =~ /[^A-Z]/) {
    $letters =~ s/[^A-Z]//;
    $blanks++;
}
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I find my $blanks = scalar ( my @blanks = ( $letters =~ /[^A-Z]/g ) ); more intuitive.

But, I like the other code a lot and am learning from it :)