Extremal self-dual codes with the smallest covering radius (Q1974541)

\textit{E. F. Assmus jun.} and \textit{V. Pless} [IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory IT-29, 359-363 (1983; Zbl 0504.94028)] showed that the minimum possible covering radius of a binary extremal doubly-even [40,20,8] code is 6, 7, or 8, where 6 was eliminated by the second author in a study not yet published. In the current paper, this case is settled by presenting a code with the aforementioned parameters and covering radius 7. This is in fact the first known extremal doubly-even code whose covering radius does not meet the bound given by \textit{P. Delsarte} [Inf. Control 23, 407-438 (1973; Zbl 0274.94010)]. The minimum covering radius of extremal singly-even codes of length \(34 \leq n \leq 46\) is also investigated.