This paper deals with questions of how many compact subsets of certain kinds it takes to cover the space ${}^{\omega }\omega$ of irrationals, or certain of its subspaces. In particular, given $f\in {}^{\omega }(\omega \setminus \left\{0\right\})$, we consider compact sets of the form ${\prod }_{i\in \omega }{B}_i$, where $|B_i|=f\left(i\right)$ for all, or for infinitely many, $i$. We also consider “$n$-splitting” compact sets, i.e., compact sets $K$ such that for any $f\in K$ and $i\in \omega$, $\left|\right\{g\left(i\right):g\in K,g\upharpoonright i=f\upharpoonright i\left\}\right|=n$.

Answering a question of Miklós Abért, we prove that an infinite profinite group cannot be the union of less than continuum many translates of a compact subset of box dimension less than 1. Furthermore, we show that it is consistent with the axioms of set theory that in any infinite profinite group there exists a compact subset of Hausdorff dimension 0 such that one can cover the group by less than continuum many translates of it.