Question 144
Jerry likes to play with numbers. One day, he wrote all the integers from $1$ to $2024$ on the whiteboard. Then he repeatedly chose four numbers on the whiteboard, erased them, and replaced them by either their sum or their product. (For example, Jerry's first step might have been to erase $1$, $2$, $3$, and $5$, and then write either $11$, their sum, or $30$, their product, on the whiteboard.) After repeatedly performing this operation, Jerry noticed that all the remaining numbers on the whiteboard were odd. What is the maximum possible number of integers on the whiteboard at that time?
(A) $1010$ (B) $1011$ (C) $1012$ (D) $1013$ (E) $1014$
(A) $1010$ (B) $1011$ (C) $1012$ (D) $1013$ (E) $1014$