I like to play the license plate game when we go on road trips. My sisters and I used to play when we would take family trips to Vegas. Vegas was such a good location because people from all over the country would visit Vegas. We would spend hours looking out the windows trying to spot one from New Mexico or New York, whichever cool plate we could find. If we spotted a license plate from another state we get to punch the others while yelling the state name. In scoring the game we add all the numbers on the plate. For example, if there’s a plate dg429f1 the points for that plate would be 16 but it would be 1 plus 6 equaling 7 points.

This game is very common among North Americans. This is not the first person to tell me about the License game, as it is a very common way to kill time while driving on a long road. I think this game is common among younger children as a distraction from boredom of road trips, but adults play it too. It’s est played wth more people in the car because it’s a challenge to be the first one to yel out the state to which te plate originates from.  When asked how he started to play this game, my informant just remembered his dad starting it when he was younger. “I’m sure he got it from his parents, and so on. It’s a just a known road trip game.”