I speculate that the most efficient mowing pattern depends on the field's geometry and that the most efficient mowing pattern can be determined by math, given the field's geometry.
Here my speculation ends -- I would advise trail and error.
Steve
Looks like that member is also plagued by crop circles?!
It seems the best pattern is where the time spent mowing (traveling with grass going under the blades) is the greatest as compared to time spent turning around or traveling when no grass is being cut.
The problem is that one pattern may result in a high cut percentage initially, then as the uncut portion gets smaller, the percentage of "wasted" time spent turning or traveling increases. (Example: A square field where one initially goes around in a "circle" cutting 100% of the time, however eventually, one is left with short rows and a lot of turning.)
Note: If really short rows left, sometime backing up is a lot quicker than turning around.
Doing a 180 turn at the end of a row would seem to reduce unproductive travel time the most, but may be discerning for some, so they usually "jump over" a few mower widths / segment the field, so that they can do arcing turns at the end (still keeping unproductive travel times a minimum). The problem here is if you guess wrong on how far to jump over, you may be left with the last strip that requires a full pass the length of the field, but is only (say) 10% the width of your mower. (Squandering all your previous " time savings").
Ideally a long (compared to width) rectangular field is best, as the time traveling the length cutting is large compared to time spent turning at the ends.