Blocking sets of almost Rédei type (Q1356024)

In this paper, the authors consider the question: what does a minimal blocking set in \(PG(2,q)\), with \(r\) points outside some fixed line, \(q<r<q +(\sqrt q)/2\), look like? Such blocking sets are called in the paper ``of almost Rédei type'' (the case \(r=q\) corresponding to blocking sets ``of Rédei type''). The main result of the paper under review puts some lower or upper bounds on the number of points of such a blocking set (depending on \(r= 1,2\), \(r>2\) and \(r\) divisible by \(p\), where \(q= p^h\), \(p\) prime). In the case \(q=p\), it is proved that, if a blocking set \(B\) contains exactly \(3(p+1)/2\) points, then every line intersecting \(B\) in at most \((p-3)/2\) points, meets \(B\) in at most \(3(3p-5)/20\) points. The proofs begin in the usual ``Rédei-way'', and use algebraic geometry (various results about bounds on the number of points on plane curves).