The WordSquares conundrum did make me think about speed and optimisation. Friends in the field do confirm that C++ (& C), Java, and in general compiled (instead of interpreted ones like Python) are much faster. The Cython library has been built to provide Python with C-like speed capabilities (by adding strong typing and, if you so desire, integrate loops into the C compiler, which greatly improve efficiency). Definitely a project for the future!

The video also includes a part on multiprocessing, which I already treated here.