Find the shortest pangrams from a word list
Ruby 159 (iterative)

Ruby 227 220 229 227 221 (recursive)

New iterative solution (based on the algorithm described by @Niel):

c={('A'..'Z').to_a=&gt;""}
while l=gets
d=c.clone
c.map{|k,v|j=k-l.upcase.chars
w=v+" "+l.strip
d[j]=w if !c[j]||c[j].size&lt;w.size}
c=d
end
x=c[[]]
p x[1..-1] if x


Old recursive solution:

W=[]
while l=gets
W&lt;&lt;l.strip
end
I=W.join(" ")+"!!"
C={[]=&gt;""}
def o(r)if C[r]
C[r]
else
b=I
W.map{|x|s=r-x.upcase.chars
if s!=r
c=x+" "+o(s)
b=c if c.size&lt;b.size
end}
C[r]=b
end
end
r=o ('A'..'Z').to_a
p r[0..-2] if r!=I


The byte measurement is based on leaving off the final newline in the file, which does not matter to ruby 2.3.1p112. The byte count went back up after fixing a small bug (adding .downcase .upcase for case-insensitivity as required by the problem statement).

Here is an earlier version from before shortening identifiers and such:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

$words = [];

while (line=gets)
  $words &lt;&lt; line[0..-2];
end

$impossible = $words.join(" ")+"!!";

$cache = {};

def optimize(remaining)
  return $cache[remaining] if ($cache[remaining]);
  return "" if (remaining == []);

  best = $impossible;

  $words.each{|word|
    remaining2 = remaining - word.chars;
    if (remaining2 != remaining)
      curr = word + " " + optimize(remaining2);
      best = curr if (curr.length &lt; best.length);
    end
  };

  $stderr.puts("optimize(#{remaining.inspect})=#{best.inspect}");

  return $cache[remaining] = best;
end

result = optimize(('a'..'z').to_a);

puts(result[0..-1]);


How does it work? It basically maintains a set of characters still to cover and only recurses on a word if it would reduce the uncovered set. Additionally, the results of recursion are memoized. Each subset of 2^26 corresponds to a memoization table entry. Each such entry is calculated in time proportional to the size of the input file. So the whole thing is O(N) (where N is the size of the input file), albeit with a huge constant.