The table of letters search is a nice little problem. You may like to ponder the following solution:

use strict;
use warnings;

my $obj = bless {toDir => {qw(01 s 11 se 10 e 1-1 ne 0-1 n -1-1 nw -10
+ w -11 s)}};
@{$obj}{'width', 'height'} = map {chomp; $_} split ',', <DATA>;

for my $rowNum (1 .. $obj->{height}) {
    defined ($_ = <DATA>) or die
        "Fewer table rows than expected. Expected $obj->{height}, got 
+@{[$rowNum - 1]}";
    chomp;
    push @{$obj->{table}}, [split ''];
    die "Short row given at row $rowNum" unless $obj->{width} == @{$ob
+j->{table}[-1]};
}

while (<DATA>) {
    chomp;
    push @{$obj->{wordList}}, split /,\s*/, uc;
}

for my $x (0 .. $obj->{width} - 1) {
    for my $y (0 .. $obj->{height} - 1) {
        $obj->explore ($x, $y);
    }
}


sub explore {
    my ($self, $x, $y) = @_;
    
    for my $word (@{$self->{wordList}}) {
        for my $xDelta (-1 .. 1) {
            for my $yDelta (-1 .. 1) {
                next if ! $xDelta and ! $yDelta;
                next unless $self->find ($word, $x, $y, $xDelta, $yDel
+ta);
                
                my ($xPos, $yPos) = ($x + 1, $y + 1);
                print "Found '$word' starting at $xPos, $yPos and head
+ing "
                      . $self->{toDir}{"$xDelta$yDelta"} . "\n";
            }
        }
    }
}


sub find {
    my ($self, $word, $x, $y, $xDelta, $yDelta) = @_;
    my $wordLen = length $word;
    
    return if $xDelta < 0 && $x - $wordLen < 0;
    return if $xDelta > 0 && $x + $wordLen >= $self->{width};
    return if $yDelta < 0 && $y - $wordLen < 0;
    return if $yDelta > 0 && $y + $wordLen >= $self->{height};
    return $self->search ($word, $x, $y, $xDelta, $yDelta)
}


sub search {
    my ($self, $word, $x, $y, $xDelta, $yDelta) = @_;
    my ($chr, $tail) = $word =~ /(.)(.*)/;
    my $tailLen = defined $tail ? length $tail : 0;
    
    return if $chr ne $self->{table}[$y][$x];
    return 1 if $tailLen == 0;
    return $self->search ($tail, $x + $xDelta, $y + $yDelta, $xDelta, 
+$yDelta)
}


__DATA__
15,10
ADESFJRASLXDFRT
QBRAINOUEWHGYED
RIRURLKUNGEASDV
NAOBXCSTACHUIOL
OJKDGKJGHJUINHR
AHRHOAIDFSETRGH
RXANOGSYEROGATS
TOUDOGSDSAVFTRY
UORTUOFRHRJUIKO
BTIARTHYEUVFGQA
Dogs, Cats
Train
[download]

Prints:

Found 'DOGS' starting at 4, 5 and heading se
Found 'DOGS' starting at 4, 8 and heading e
Found 'CATS' starting at 10, 4 and heading w
[download]

Unless you can explain one or two Perl idioms like @{[$rowNum - 1]} you would be smart not to try and pass this off as your own work. ;)