SICP Exercise 1.3

Exercise 1.3.  Define a procedure that takes three numbers as arguments and returns the sum of the squares of the two larger numbers.

(define (ex3 x y z)
                     (cond
                       ((> y z x) ((define a x) (define b y) (+ (square a) (square b))))
                       ((> y x z) ((define a x) (define b y) (+ (square a) (square b))))
                       ((> z y x) ((define a x) (define b y) (+ (square a) (square b))))
                       ((> z x y) ((define a x) (define b y) (+ (square a) (square b))))
                       ((> x z y) ((define a x) (define b y) (+ (square a) (square b))))
                       ((> x y z) ((define a x) (define b y) (+ (square a) (square b)))))

I know I'm thinking about this the wrong way. My solution doesn't work.

    #!/usr/bin/perl
    @_ = sort @ARGV;
    print $_[1]**$_[1]+$_[2]**$_[2];

>>84
And people say Perl is ugly. That is the most beautiful solution in this thread.

>>84,85
It's also completely wrong.  It doesn't square the arguments (unless they happen to be 2) and it sorts them as strings instead of numbers.

_{Also, assigning to @_ considered harmful.}