Interesting! Understanding the way spiraling up/down works took a bit. Figuring out what kind of pathing would be most efficient is an interesting challenge. Something kind of minor I think you could have done is make at least winning runs replace the restart option with sleep or something to make it seem more like it's all part of same continuum and each run is just another day.
Also thanks for reminding me about Lirael, reading it gave me bunch of cool ideas I'd almost forgotten about.