Yep, except this is so small, you can look at all combinations. Something like this would do it (without replacement). from itertools import combinations

Yep, except this is so small, you can look at all combinations. Something like this would do it (without replacement). from itertools import combinations arr = [ ("yoyo",1.22),("doll",2.75),("duckie",1.85),("tractor",5.97),("airplaine",6.47), ("ball",2.16),("racecar",7.13),("dog",4.57),("jumprope",1.46),("car",5.18), ("elephant",3.16),("bear",4.89),("xylophone",7.11),("tank",6.45),("checkers",4.77), ("boat",8.04),("train",6.71),("jacks",2.31),("truck",6.21),("whistle",0.98) ("pinwheel",0.87) ] for r in range(1,len(arr)+1): for thisset in list(combinations(arr, r)): if 43.94==sum([tup[1] for tup in thisset]): print ([tup[0] for tup in thisset])