Collatz polynomial

Everyone knows (or has heard of) the famous Collatz Conjecture: take a positive integer. If it is odd, multiply by $3$ and add $1$. If it is even, divide by $2$. Repeat the process until you reach $1$. Despite its simplicity, no one knows how to prove whether the sequence really always reaches $1$, regardless of the initial number.

Aline, a fan of this type of curiosity, decided to create a variation using polynomials instead of numbers. To keep things simple, she works only with polynomials whose coefficients are $0$ or $1$, that is, each power of $x$ appears at most once.

The game works like this:

• If the polynomial has a constant term (a term that does not depend on $x$), Aline multiplies the polynomial by $(x + 1)$ and then adds $1$. If any resulting coefficient equals $2$, the corresponding term is discarded (note that coefficients greater than $2$ cannot arise).
• If the polynomial has no constant term, Aline divides the polynomial by $x$.

This process is repeated until the polynomial reduces to $P(x) = 1$.

Consider $P(x) = x^3 + 1$. In the first step there is a constant term, so we calculate:

$(x^3 + 1) \cdot (x + 1) + 1 = x^4 + x^3 + x + 1 + 1$.

Since the coefficient of the constant term is $2$, this term is discarded, leaving:

$x^4 + x^3 + x$.

Next, since there is no constant term, we divide by $x$:

$x^3 + x^2 + 1$.

Continuing:

• Step $3$: $x^4 + x^2 + x$
• Step $4$: $x^3 + x + 1$
• Step $5$: $x^4 + x^3 + x^2$
• Step $6$: $x^3 + x^2 + x$
• Step $7$: $x^2 + x + 1$
• Step $8$: $x^3$
• Step $9$: $x^2$
• Step $10$: $x$
• Step $11$: $1$

In total, it took $11$ operations to reach the polynomial $P(x) = 1$.

Aline needs help to study this variation of the Collatz Conjecture. Since doing these calculations manually is prone to errors, write a program that determines the number of operations needed until the polynomial becomes $P(x) = 1$.

The first line contains an integer $N$ ($0 ≤ N ≤ 20$), indicating the degree of the polynomial.

The second line contains $N + 1$ integers $a\_N , a\_{N−1}, \dots , a\_0$ (each equal to $0$ or $1$), where $a\_i = 1$ indicates that the term $x^i$ is present in the polynomial, and $a\_i = 0$ indicates that it is not. Note that $a\_N = 1$, since the degree of the polynomial is $N$.

Your program must output a single line, containing an integer, representing the number of operations needed until the polynomial becomes $P(x) = 1$.