No comments on your code, but wouldn't the optimal strategy be to pick not the most common letter, but the letter that is closest to appearing in exactly half of the possible remaining words? That way you eliminate ~1/2 of the candidates in each turn.

At least in your example, a letter never appears in more than half of the candidates, so the most frequent letter and the closest-to-half-half letter coincide. But imagine if you found out that the actual word contained Q. Then for sure the next most common letter will be a U; but guessing U and getting it right will not give you much new information. Aiming for half-half lets your correct and incorrect guesses both contribute information.

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.