Search using the MX Range Slider plugin
The way the plugin is currently written, it won't support your initial syntax. i.e. range('and', '&gt;=' ~ result.points, '&lt;=' ~ result.points).  It would need to override BaseFieldType's modifyElementsQuery to support that syntax.

You could slightly improve on your solution by using the MN Break and Continue plugin to at least break out of the for loop once a match is found.