In Martin Gardners October, 1976 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American, he posed the following problem: What is the smallest number of [queens] you can put on a board of side n such that no [queen] can be added without creating three in a
row, a column, or a diagonal? We use the Combinatorial Nullstellensatz to prove that this number is at least n, except in the case when n is congruent to 3 modulo 4, in which case one less may suffice. A second, more elementary proof is also offered in the case that n is even.
