Making this password search more intelligent

In a homework, there is an exercise in which I have a script that is used to search for a password.

One of the questions is if is possible to make it "more intelligent", and I'm stuck on it.

#!/bin/bash

space1="a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z"

if [  $# -le 1 ]
then 
    echo "Ussage: " $0 SALT PASSWORD_CODED
    exit
fi

for i in $space1
do
for j in $space1
do
for k in $space1
do

    variable=$(openssl passwd -crypt -salt "$1" "$i$j$k")
    if [ "$variable" = $2 ]
        then
        echo password found: $i$j$k
        exit
    fi
done
done
done

If it is possible, I prefer only a clue to help me to discover the answer correct, not the answer itself. I promise to post the result when I get the answer for myself.

There's no real way to speed up the brute-force enumeration of all possible 3-letter passwords.

Perhaps you could use the dictionary. There's a finite list of 3-letter English words. They may be slightly more common.

Also, if you google for "most common passwords", some kind of 3-letter version of that list could be tried before anything else.

StackExchange Code Review Q#5226, answer score: 3