Answer by Solomon Ucko for Simplifying a Scrabble Word Finder - Python

A combination of other answers plus my own changes (with changes highlighted/explained in comments):

SCORES = {"a": 1, "c": 3, "b": 3, "e": 1, "d": 2, "g": 2,
         "f": 4, "i": 1, "h": 4, "k": 5, "j": 8, "m": 3,
         "l": 1, "o": 1, "n": 1, "q": 10, "p": 3, "s": 1,
         "r": 1, "u": 1, "t": 1, "w": 4, "v": 4, "y": 4,
         "x": 8, "z": 10} # Capitalized (constant)

def calc_score(word):
    """Calculate the score of a given word."""
    sum({SCORES[letter] for letter in word}) # Using set comprehension and sum function

def look_up():
    """Create the variable containing the master list of words."""
    with open("sowpods.txt", "r") as read_dict: # Ensures file is closed no matter what
        return read_dict.read().split("\n") # Returns immediately instead of creating an unnecessary variable

all_words = look_up()

def get_words(rack):
    """Check the letters in the rack against the SOWPOD dictionary and append valid words to a list."""
    return {word for word in all_words if set(rack).issuperset(word)} # Uses set, set comprehension

def get_word_scores(letters):
    """Create a dictionary of the words with their scores."""
    return {word: calc_score(word) for word in get_words()} # Uses map comprehension

def list_print():
    """Print a list of the words in descending order of value."""
    word_scores = get_word_scores(set(raw_input("Letters: ").lower())) # Changed var. name
    sorted_word_scores = sorted(dict.items(), key=lambda k: k[1], reverse=True) # Changed var. name
    for word_score in sorted_word_scores: # Changed var. name
        print word_score[0], "-", word_score[1]
if __name__ == "__main__":
    list_print()