TITLE: How prove that there are $a,b,c$ such that $a \in A, b \in B, c \in C$ and $a,b,c$ (with approriate order) is a arithmetic sequence?
QUESTION [5 upvotes]: Let $N=\{ 1,2,3,..., 3n \}$ with $n$ is a positive integer and $A,B,C$ are three arbitrary sets such that $A \cup B \cup C = N, A \cap B = B \cap C = C \cap A = \varnothing, |A| = |B| = |C| = n $.
How prove that there are $a,b,c$ such that $a \in A, b \in B, c \in C$  and $a,b,c$ (with approriate order)  is a arithmetic sequence?

REPLY [2 votes]: This was a conjecture posed by Rados Radocic Which was proven independently by by Radocic and Veselin Jungic in 2003 and by Maria Axenovich and Dimitri von der Flass in 2004.