[aquateen]

I don't see how the sum would be unique to a particular combination of letters.

[tylerhou]

Works if you assign prime numbers to each letter and multiply instead. So a=2, b=3, etc.

[tuukkah]

To get decent anagram lengths and complexity, implement the numbers as a dict of repetitions of primes, and implement the multiplication by summing the repetitions. ;-)

[reinhardt]

In which case you can just compare the dicts without performing the multiplication (which happens to be the costliest part for arbitrary-precision integers).

[tuukkah]

Exactly.

[jcadam]

I briefly mused about just summing the ASCII codes for each letter in the strings. But quickly discarded the idea for this reason :)

[LyndsySimon]

“ad” = “bc”

You’re right.

[D_Alex]

What if a=1, b=10, c=100 - etc? Assuming the strings were English words...