On the covering of $n + ε$ square with $n^2 + 1$ unit squares for $n \geq 4$

Source abstract

In 2006, Alexander Soifer conjectured that one cannot fully cover a square of side length $> n$ with $n^2 + O(1)$ unit squares. For small $n \in \{2, 3\}$, in 2009, Janusz Januszewski proved that it is impossible to fully cover a square of side length $> n$ with exactly $n^2 + 1$ unit squares. Recently in 2023, Baek and Lee proved that it is impossible to fully cover an equilateral triangle of side length $> n$ with exactly $n^2 + 1$ unit equilateral triangles whose sides are parallel to it. There were also some progress on a related problem: what is the largest square with side length $S(k)$ that can be fully covered by $k$ unit squares. However, there have been no improvement on the original conjecture. In this work, new tools have been developed that led to the proof of this conjecture for $n = 4$, with potential applications to related problems.