How many ways can you remove one tile from a grid such that the resulting figure can be tiled by and rectangles?
Solution
Number the rows and columns of the grid from 0 to 2013, thereby assigning an ordered pair to each tile. We claim that a tile may be selected if and only if ; call such a square good. First, let us show that this condition is sufficient. Observe that any such square is the corner of a canonical square whose vertices are all good. Then the sides of partition the board into nine distinct regions. It's easy to see that all of them can be suitably tiled. Now we show that only good squares can be removed. Let be a non-real cube root of unity. In the tile with coordinates , place the complex number . Note that any or rectangle placed on the grid must cover three squares with sum . Now, note that the sum of the numbers on the whole grid, including the removed tile, is which can be simplified to 1 using the identity . Therefore, it is necessary that . By placing the complex number instead of , the same calculations show that is necessary. This can only occur if . Hence the answer is exactly the set of good squares, of which there are .