Is it possible to crack a salt from hash with or without cleartext?

[dadver]

I don't think you quite know what you're doing...

Well no shit, hence I'm asking.

Yes, it's about logic/common sense, like thinking a bit.
It's exactly the same as cracking a hash to recover a password, except for this case you switch the salt with the password.

I think I understand that I need to provide the cleartext as a salt instead of the salt and then reverse the order of the hash type (i.e. if the hash algo used is md5($p.$s) I reverse it to md5($s.$p)), which works good in my tests, but I can't seem to understand how I'm supposed to do it in the case of working against a wordlist rather than brute forcing from a known cleartext?

If you'd be so kind and explain it to me rather than acting all high and mighty that would be cool.