You're running into a common difficulty for newer programmers. Here are some good rules of thumb to keep in mind:

• Variable starts with a $: You're asking for a "scalar" value.
• Variable starts with a @: You're asking for an array of scalars.
• Variable starts with a %: It's a hash.
• Square braces - [ and ] - with the variable often indicates that you're accessing an array element.
• Curly braces - { and } - with the variable names means you're trying to access a hash element.

That's not exactly comprehensive, but it usually holds. For example, when you had the following line:

$secretword=$words{$name};
[download]

The curly braces should indicated that you were expecting "words" to be a hash. So, when you have a problem, you go back and look at how words is defined. In this case, it's declared as an array with the @ symbol.

If you had use strict at the top of your program, you would have received a fatal error for trying to access a "words" hash that was undeclared. Actually, you would have gotten errors earlier when you tried to assign elements to the @words array. I know that's not covered right away in the book you are using, but it's a good practice to get into (along with using warnings, the -w switch). Using strict and warnings will save you many hours of debugging and, in this case, an error would have occured long before it did, thus allowing you to have a better idea what's actually causing the error.

Unfortunately, the above information is a very simplistic treatment of the issues, but it's some good stuff to always keep in mind when you are first starting out.

Cheers,
Ovid

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