Extensions of Golomb’s Tromino Theorem

Jonathan Lenchner, IBM T.J.Watson Research Center

November 18, 2014

We will describe a number of generalizations of a theorem of Golomb’s, which says that if you remove a single square from a chessboard of size $2^N \times 2^N$ ($N \ge 0$), the remaining board can always be tiled with L-shaped trominoes. In addition we will describe some impossibility of tiling results including a result of de Bruijn’s. Joint work with Arthur Befumo.