Possible Contender

You have an array $A$ of length $N$. You can perform the following operation on it as many times as you like (possibly, zero): - Choose two integers $L$ and $R$ ($1 \leq L \lt R \leq |A|$); - Delete the elements $A_L, A_{L+1}, \ldots, A_R$ from $A$; and - Insert the median$^\dagger$ of $[A_L, A_{L+1}, \ldots, A_R]$ in their place. Here, $|A|$ denotes the length of $A$. Note that this length red