def anagrams(subject, candidates)
  candidates.each do |candidate|
    subject != candidate && same_alphagram?(subject, candidate)
  end
end

Ahhh, you’re going at it wrong mate.

Don’t go looking for a Candidate class

Look for an enumerable container of candidate, and subject that is is comparable (!=) to a candidate.

And do a similar duck type analysis of same_alphagram?

ie. Stop looking for types, look for collections of methods. Subtly different.

If you think types are important, Ruby might not be where you want to spend your time. I know that sounds like “oh another type snob”, but really, I’m working on a Python project now and I’m a big fan of static types and it’s rather miserable. The trick and assumptions I’m used to making don’t work and the ways I design my programs not very usable, or horribly awkward. If types are important, then hanging out in unityped language is probably a good way to write bad code.

How about something like:

def anagrams(String subject, String[] candidates)

Lets you immediately understand what types the function expects. Just too bad a lot of languages don’t have a good way to convey that information.