Lower bound on the covering radius of a code
The idea is to use a sphere packing argument, only for covering. Let $V_q(\rho)$ be the volume of a Hamming ball of radius $\rho$. The Hamming balls around all codewords cover the entire space, so $V_q(\rho) q^k \geq q^n$, or $V_q(\rho) \geq q^{n-k}$. To deduce the bound, use an approximation for $V_q(\rho)$.