def find_best_shifts_rec(wordlist, text, start):
    """
    Given a scrambled string and a starting position from which
    to decode, returns a shift key that will decode the text to
    words in wordlist, or None if there is no such key.

    Hint: You will find this function much easier to implement
    if you use recursion.

    wordlist: list of words
    text: scambled text to try to find the words for
    start: where to start looking at shifts
    returns: list of tuples.  each tuple is (position in text, amount of shift)
    """
    print "Text length:", len(text)
    print "Start:", start
    print "Text to shift:", text[start:], "\n"
    print "Beginning loop:"

    def get_word_and_space(text):
        first_word = ''
        for char in text:
            if char != ' ':
                first_word += char
            else:
                first_word += ' '
                break
        return first_word

    for x in range(0,28):
        shifted_text = apply_shift(text[:], x)
        #splitted = shifted_text[start:].partition(' ')
        splitted = get_word_and_space(shifted_text[start:])
        print "x is:", x
        print "Potential splitted:", splitted
        if is_word(wordlist, splitted) is True:
            print "\n\n", splitted, "\n\n"
            print start, x
            print "lensplit plus start is", len(splitted) + start, "\n"
            print "-------------------------------------------------------"
            print shifted_text
            print shifted_text[(len(splitted)+ start + 1):]
            print "-------------------------------------------------------"
            return [(start, x)] + find_best_shifts_rec(wordlist, shifted_text, len(splitted)+ start + 0)

    if start >= len(text) or text[start:] in string.punctuation:
        return []