TITLE: Prove that it is not possible to completely cover a 6 × 6 chessboard by tiles which have dimensions 1 × 4.
QUESTION [5 upvotes]: I think I have some sort of understanding of how to solve this but I'm not sure.
I would colour the board with 4 colours such that every 1x4 rectangle would cover one of each colour. 
Then cover the bottom 4 rows such that we are left with a 2x6 rectangle.
Then fill the 4 leftmost columns so we are left with a 2x2 square which will have 2 tiles of the same colour hence it is impossible to cover the board with 1x4 tiles.
Would that be a correct answer?
Edit: 
My colouring scheme works like this:
The 4 colours will be represented as 0,1,2 and 3.
Working along the top row of the board, we may as well label the first four squares 0, 1, 2 and 3, in that order.
In order to satisfy the property that any 4 × 1 rectangle placed on the board occupies one square of each colour, the next square along must be labelled 0. And the next square along must be labelled 1, and the next square along must be labelled 2, and the next square along must be labelled 3, and so on. 
So we see that every square in the first row will be coloured according to the
repeating pattern 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 3, . . .. Since this seems to work along the first row, we can use the same trick to fill the first column.
Then cycle through the rows marking tiles in the same pattern.
(The first tile of the second row is 1 so the tile to the left of it is 2, the next one is 3 and so on for every row)
Finally the board will be coloured in such a way that the square in
row i and column j is coloured i + j modulo 4.

REPLY [3 votes]: In every second row, color every second field black.  All other fields remain white.  So in total, there are 9 black fields.
w w w w w w
w B w B w B
w w w w w w
w B w B w B
w w w w w w
w B w B w B

Verify that any way to place a 1×4 tile on that board will cover an even number of black fields, either 0 or 2.
Contradiction: A complete tiling would have to cover an odd number of black fields.