you can also use a boustrophedon distribution:

use Data::Dump 

my @A = (1..12); 
my $data;
my $i = 0; 
while (@A){ 
           push @{$data->[$i]},shift @A;
           $i == 3 ? $i = -1 : $i == -4 ? $i = 0 :  $i < 0 ? $i-- : $i
+++;
} 

dd $data;

__DATA__

[
 [1, 8, 9], 
 [2, 7, 10], 
 [3, 6, 11], 
 [4, 5, 12]
]
[download]

See also How to get this not the usual round robin looping for more examples about such distribution

L*