On multivariate polynomials with many roots over a finite grid

In this paper, we consider roots of multivariate polynomials over a finite grid. When given information on the leading monomial with respect to a fixed monomial ordering, the footprint bound [Footprints or generalized Bezout's theorem, IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory 46(2) (2000) 635-641, On (or in) Dick Blahut's 'footprint', Codes, Curves Signals (1998) 3-9] provides us with an upper bound on the number of roots, and this bound is sharp in that it can always be attained by trivial polynomials being a constant times a product of an appropriate combination of terms consisting of a variable minus a constant. In contrast to the one variable case, there are multivariate polynomials attaining the footprint bound being not of the above form. This even includes irreducible polynomials. The purpose of the paper is to determine a large class of polynomials for which only the mentioned trivial polynomials can attain the bound, implying that to search for other polynomials with the maximal number of roots one must look outside this class.