Jo’s undergraduate students work on the Pennies and Paperclips task from Discovering the Art of Mathematics:
Pennies and Paperclips is a two-player game played on a 4 by 4 checkerboard with a standard color pattern. One player, “Penny”, gets two pennies as her pieces. The other player, “Clip”, gets a pile of paperclips as his pieces. Penny places her two pennies on any two different squares on the board. Once the pennies are placed, Clip attempts to cover the remainder of the board with paperclips — with each paperclip being required to cover two adjacent squares. Paperclips are not allowed to overlap. If the remainder of the board can be covered with paperclips then Clip is declared the winner. If the remainder of the board cannot be covered with paperclips then Penny is the winner.
For more information on the problem visit: https://www.artofmathematics.org/blogs/jfleron/pennies-paperclip-proofs
4 minute version of the video:
8 minute version of the video: