Problem

Source: 2021 Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Mathematical Contest p2 (Baltic Way TST) https://artofproblemsolving.com/community/c1321893_grand

Tags: combinatorics, Coloring



Every number in the sequence $1, 2, ... , 2021$ is either white or black. At one step Alice can choose three numbers of the sequence and change the color of each of them (white to black and black to white) if one of those three numbers is the arithmetic mean of the other two. Alice wants to perform several steps so that at the end all the numbers in the sequence are black. For which initial colorings of numbers can Alice achieve this?