Moving Pieces

There is a 5×5 board with at most 5 pieces on it. You want to move the pieces so that all of them form a single connected component. That is, when you connect pieces that are adjacent horizontally or vertically, every pair of pieces must be linked through at least one path.

In one move, you may shift a single piece to an adjacent cell in one of the four directions (up, down, left, right). Because each cell can hold at most one piece, you cannot move a piece onto a cell that is already occupied. Given the state of the board, write a program that finds the minimum number of moves needed to make all pieces form a single connected component.

The state of the board is given over five lines. An empty cell is denoted by ., and a piece by *. The number of pieces is between 1 and 5, inclusive.

Print the minimum number of moves required to make all pieces form a single connected component.