For the bonus question (on OSX):

words= textread('/usr/share/dict/words','%s');

for k=1:numel(words)
wordprod(k) = word_product(words{k});
end
[~,i] = min(abs(wordprod-1000000));
words{i}
wordprod(i)

% curing with word product of 1000188

For the bonus question, we can rule out any number that has a prime factor greater than 26 (z). The product found by Jason Friedman is the first number greater than 10^6 that does not have such a prime factor. The product 999856 is the largest number less than 10^6 to be part of a possible solution.

I like playing with strings and ASCII table ;)