Saving the highscore for a game?

I recommend you use shelve. For example:

import shelve
d = shelve.open('score.txt')  # here you will save the score variable   
d['score'] = score            # thats all, now it is saved on disk.
d.close()

Next time you open your program use:

import shelve
d = shelve.open('score.txt')
score = d['score']  # the score is read from disk
d.close()

and it will be read from disk. You can use this technique to save a list of scores if you want in the same way.