A note on strong blocking sets and higgledy-piggledy sets of lines

This paper studies {\em strong blocking sets} in the $N$-dimensional finite projective space $\mathrm{P}\mathrm{G}(N,q)$. We first show that certain unions of blocking sets cannot form strong blocking sets, which leads to a new lower bound on the size of a strong blocking set in $\mathrm{P}\mathrm{G}(N,q)$. Our second main result shows that, for $q>\frac{2}{ln(2)}(N+1)$, there exists a subset of $2N-2$ lines of a Desarguesian line spread in $\mathrm{P}\mathrm{G}(N,q)$, $N$ odd, in {\em higgledy-piggledy arrangement}; thus giving rise to a strong blocking set of size $(2N-2)(q+1)$.