An by checkerboard has alternating white and black squares. How many distinct squares, with sides on the grid lines of the checkerboard (horizontal and vertical) and containing at least black squares, can be drawn on the checkerboard?
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Take a look at different sizes of squares you can find on a chessboard. Every 2 × 2 square is going to have 2 black squares and 2 white squares in it. Therefore, one of the squares meeting the conditions of the question would have to be larger than 2 × 2 . Take a look at 3 × 3 squares. These squares can either have 4 black squares (if the corners are white) or 5 black squares (if the corners are black). Therefore, any 3 × 3 square or larger will meet the conditions of the problem.
The number of k × k squares on an n × n chessboard is ( n − k + 1 ) 2 . For example, on a standard 8 × 8 chessboard, there are 3 6 3 × 3 squares, 4 7 × 7 squares, and so on. Therefore, the answer to the problem is k = 1 ∑ 6 k 2 = 9 1