Here is my solution in Java for the Quora programming challenge:

To compile it, you need JDK >1.5 and just do "javac Quora.java" To run it, do "java Quora < inputFile" On my machine, for the sample input, it runs in under 1 second and returns 301716 (run it >10 times to take the average as the JVM usually warms up during the first run).

Although the code is only about 100 lines long, I made tons of optimizations and thus the code is hard to understand. I basically do a simple recursive search and use various pruning heuristics and state-saving bithacks to optimize for time:

Pruning heuristics:

1. While exploring if you reach a position where there are 2 neighbors with 1 exits each, don't explore that branch anymore.
2. While exploring, do a floodFill from the end and check if there's any cell the floodFill did not cover. This means there's a blocked off region, don't explore anymore.

Bithacks:

1. Store position (x,y) in a single byte (first 4-bits for x and and last 4 bits for y). This assumes that we would not be given sides bigger than 2^4.
2. Store current state (visited/not-visited) in a single 64-bit long. This assumes that we would not be given grids with more than 64 cells.

Java Tricks: 1) Using try-finally was surprisingly 3x faster than doing it the "right way" by having bunch of iffs. 2) Using all static methods called from the main method

Future optimizations: 1) Flood-fills initially are almost always futile as we have not covered enough of the grid yet. Schedule floodFills "smartly" and with probability directly proportional to how filled the grid is. 2) Instead of only storing state as visited-not-visited, also store current position as part of the state to reduce more recursive calls. 3) Invent your own custom hashtable instead of using the SDK one e.g. Trove's LongToIntHashMap 4) Rearchitect the code to be non recursive - simulate recursion/DFS using a single global stack array. Similar idea how I simulated BFS in floodFill using single global array.