The only other potential query approach that comes to mind is some kind of recursive CTE.
Interesting. Care to give an example of how to solve this using recursive CTE?
My skill with recursive CTEs is abyssmal, so no, that is not a challenge that I wish to take on at this time. I'm not positive there is a meaningful one to even be had but the idea of choosing a parent time and then either expanding its covered range or adding a child is at least compelling enough to make it worth exploring if current solutions are undesirable.