Problem

Source: Greece JMO 2018, pr 2

Tags: rectangle, combinatorics, Coloring



A $8\times 8$ board is given. Seven out of $64$ unit squares are painted black. Suppose that there exists a positive $k$ such that no matter which squares are black, there exists a rectangle (with sides parallel to the sides of the board) with area $k$ containing no black squares. Find the maximum value of $k$.