Reddit Snake Challenge in Perl

snake.pl

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use warnings;
use strict;

my $base_word = "SHENANIGANS SALTY YOUNGSTER ROUND DOUBLET TERABYTE ESSENCE";
my @word_array = split(/\s+/, $base_word);

my $counter = 0;
my $spaces = "";
foreach my $word(@word_array) {
    if($counter % 2 == 0)
    {
        print $spaces;
        print "$word\n";
        $spaces = $spaces . " " x (length($word)-1);
    }
    else
    {
        my @char_array = split("", $word);

        foreach my $letter(@char_array) {
            print $spaces;
            print "$letter\n";
        }
    }

    $counter++;
}