> Is this any better? It depends, but probably not. ... But if you had some wild application where you needed to keep trillions of game states unpacked [1] in m

> Is this any better? It depends, but probably not. ... But if you had some wild application where you needed to keep trillions of game states unpacked [1] in memory, then sure, use base-3. I think I'd want to represent those trillions of game states in the the 10-bit representation it mentioned earlier and keep around a uint32_t[765] to map that to the more practical 18-bit version. (or rather something like 13-bit and uint32_t[5477] because llimos pointed out that the 765 is after rotation.) [1] I think the word "unpacked" here is just carelessly chosen rather than a contrast to the "pack them tightly using 18 bits for the base-4 representation or 15 bits for the base-3 representation" in the paragraph I elided.