Wow people. You don't need Dijkstra's algorithm for this. You are making it waaaay too complicated.
The real problem here is figuring out how to deal with the spiral coordinate system. And it's not that hard a problem. It would be nice not to discourage somebody attempting a perfectly good problem..
EDIT: The ACM programming problems are like elementary school world problems. There is stuff in there which is meant to throw you off what is actually a very simple solution. Clearly, that stuff worked!
