Car numberplate game

One game played in Europe is to spot the 26 letters of the alphabet on passing number plates, starting with A and working forwards.

[clarification needed] In countries where local regions are marked on number plates, such as France or Germany, players can look for cars from different areas.

In France, the last two digits of the number plate shows the car's department (e.g. 49 is Maine-et-Loire and 16 is Charente.).

Another game is spotting unusual vanity plates, where the car owner has paid a premium to get a particular code, like "REDBMW", "HERTOY," or "BONZO".

A similar variant, particularly popular in the United Kingdom, involves considering the last three letters of a number plate to be an acronym, and creating a three-word sentence that fits.

Various car-spotting games exist in which players look out for cars which have rare traits, such as a particular colour or model.

The Canadian gameshow Bumper Stumpers ran in the 1980s, and challenged its contestants to solve gramogram letter puzzles presented as vanity licence plates, such as "PYR88" having a solution of "pirates" ("pyr" + "eights").