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Combinatorics Difficulty 7.6 National Olympiad, round 2 Prove it Ireland

You have a 3×20213 \times 2021 chessboard from which one corner square has been removed. You also have a set of 30313031 identical dominoes, each of which can cover two adjacent chessboard squares. Let mm be the number of ways in which the chessboard can be covered with the dominoes, without gaps or overlaps.
What is the remainder when mm is divided by 1919?

Solution

Let bnb_n be the number of ways of covering a 3×(2n+1)3 \times (2n + 1) chessboard with one corner square removed with 3n+13n + 1 dominoes. We are interested in the value of b1010b_{1010}.
Let ana_n be the number of ways of covering a 3×2n3 \times 2n chessboard with 3n3n dominoes. We develop a recurrence relation for ana_n and bnb_n.
For n1n \ge 1, let us consider a covering of the 3×2n3 \times 2n chessboard. Number the cells of the chessboard (i,j)(i, j) where 1i31 \le i \le 3 is a row and 1j2n1 \le j \le 2n is a column. With respect to the first column, there are three cases:
* All three dominoes in this column are horizontal.
* There is a vertical domino covering (1,1)(1, 1) and (2,1)(2, 1) which implies there is a horizontal domino covering (3,1)(3, 1) and (3,2)(3, 2).
* There is a vertical domino covering (2,1)(2, 1) and (3,1)(3, 1) which implies there is a horizontal domino covering (1,1)(1, 1) and (1,2)(1, 2).
The number of ways of covering the remaining parts of the chessboard are an1a_{n-1}, bn1b_{n-1} and bn1b_{n-1} respectively. Thus we have:
an=an1+2bn1. a_n = a_{n-1} + 2b_{n-1}.
Now consider a covering of the 3×(2n+1)3 \times (2n + 1) chessboard with the square (3,1)(3, 1) removed. There are two cases:
* The cells (1,1)(1, 1) and (2,1)(2, 1) are covered by a single vertical domino.
* There is a horizontal domino covering (1,1)(1, 1) and (1,2)(1, 2) and another horizontal domino covering (2,1)(2, 1) and (2,2)(2, 2). This implies there must also be a horizontal domino covering (3,2)(3, 2) and (3,3)(3, 3).
Adding together these two cases, we deduce that:
bn=an+bn1. b_n = a_n + b_{n-1}.
We can calculate the first few here:

nana_nbnb_nana_n (mod 19)bnb_n (mod 19)
01111
13434
211151115
34156318
415320910
557178011
62131291134

We note a period of 55 in the remainder modulo 1919. As 10100(mod5)1010 \equiv 0 \pmod{5} we conclude B=b10101(mod19)B = b_{1010} \equiv 1 \pmod{19}.

Let bnb_n be the number of ways of covering a 3×(2n+1)3 \times (2n+1) chessboard with one corner square removed with 3n+13n+1 dominoes. We are interested in the value of b1010b_{1010}.
Suppose the corner square is removed from the first column of the (2n+1)×3(2n+1) \times 3 chessboard.
If n1n \ge 1, the dominoes that cover the squares of the last column can be placed in three different ways:
Figure 1
In type 1, the squares of the second last column are already covered. In types 2 and 3, there are two possibilities how the remaining two squares in the second last column can be covered, provided that n2n \ge 2:
Figure 2
When n=1n=1 and the bottom square of the first column is removed, type 3b is not possible. Using the obvious b0=1b_0=1, we see now that b1=4b_1=4; the four possibilities are obtained from types 1, 2a, 2b and 3a.

Therefore, the contribution to bn+1b_{n+1} from types 2b and 3b is equal to the number of possibilities to tile the (2n+1)×3(2n+1) \times 3 chessboard so that the last two columns are not of type 1. As we have seen above, the number of possibilities to tile a (2n+1)×3(2n+1) \times 3 chessboard with the last two columns of type 1 is equal to bn1b_{n-1}, hence the contribution to bn+1b_{n+1} from types 2b and 3b together is equal to bnbn1b_n - b_{n-1}, and finally
bn+1=3bn+bnbn1=4bnbn1. b_{n+1} = 3b_n + b_n - b_{n-1} = 4b_n - b_{n-1}.
Starting with b0=1b_0 = 1 and b1=4b_1 = 4 we can now calculate bnb_n (mod 19):

n0123456
bnb_n (mod 19)14-4-1014

It follows that bnb_n (mod 19) repeats with period 55 and b5k1(mod19)b_{5k} \equiv 1 \pmod{19}. In particular b10101(mod19)b_{1010} \equiv 1 \pmod{19}.

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