Problem:
A T-tetromino is formed by adjoining three unit squares to form a rectangle, and adjoining on top of the middle square a fourth unit square. Determine the minimum number of unit squares that must be removed from a grid so that it can be tiled with T-tetrominoes.
Solutions — 2
Solution 1
Solution:
We provide the following construction, which shows that the answer is at most four. Clearly, four T-tetrominoes tile a grid, as follows:

These can be used to tile the upper-left grid. It can be verified that the following pattern fills the remaining space, leaving four grid squares uncovered:

As the answer must be a multiple of four, it remains to prove that the answer is not zero, that is, it is impossible to tile a grid with T-tetrominoes.
Number the rows of the grid, from left to right, with . Similarly, number the columns of the grid, from top to bottom, with .
Assign the square numbered with the weight . It can be verified that a T-tetromino, no matter how it is placed, covers a sum of weights divisible by . However, the sum of all the weights is not divisible by , as desired.
Solution 2
Solution:
An alternative way to prove that the grid cannot be tiled with T-tetrominoes is with a checkerboard coloring.
For the sake of contradiction, assume that the board can be tiled with T-tetrominoes. Clearly, a T-tetromino covers only either three or one black square. Let be the number of T-tetrominoes each covering three black squares and be the number of T-tetrominoes each covering only one black square. Counting the number of black and white squares yields
which contradicts the fact that and are integers.