Right by "packing" problem this article is maybe more about a "word-alignment" problem, finding the smallest "word" that most efficiently stores base-3 words in

Right by "packing" problem this article is maybe more about a "word-alignment" problem, finding the smallest "word" that most efficiently stores base-3 words in base-2 words with the least wasted values in that word. It's an interesting coincidence that 5 trits per 8 bits is rather optimal, because the 8-bit "byte" is such a useful and important "word" shape in modern binary computers. For the other side perspective, as amelius asked: the historic Setun used 18-trit words and that is surprisingly efficient at storing 28-bit words (0.643 bits per trit; the most efficient up to 32-bits of possible word alignment is 30-bits in 19-trits at 0.633 repeating bits per trit) if for some reason you needed to do interop. Of course 28-bit words aren't a standard binary word-size and if you wanted to try to find a word alignment that fits for both modern binary computers and Setun, might be 16-bits in 11-trits (0.6875 bits per trit). I suppose if you were building ternary hardware today you might shoot for a 41-trit word to align with modern 64-bit words (0.641 bits per trit).