Nice ... It took me a sec to notice it was | and not ||. You can shave off a char by replacing "@_" with pop. I tried to save more, but each time I came up with the same # of chars, just a different way to do it. It almost looks obfuscated now : ), but here's a solution at 54:

sub k {
$_=$-x3|pop;!/495/&&1+k(-($_=join$k,sort/./g)+reverse)
}
[download]

Update:Nice catch Sean. I tested it, just not against numbers like 100 233. It looks like the am wins then, unless that can be beaten.

The 15 year old, freshman programmer,
Stephen Rawls