Friday 15 April 2011

Its The End Of The Numberplate Game (As We Know It)

Do you play the numberplate game?
Do you know what it is?

I read about it in an obscure "Travel Game" book when I was younger.
Basically, you take the 3 letters on the numberplate in front of you, and try to make a word with those 3 letters.
So HDL 363 GP could be HuDdLe, HurDLe, HanDLe or others.
There are variations, where no 2 letters in the numberplate must touch in the word, ie: SLT coudl be SLoT, but the S and L are touching, so a better word would be SiLenT.
Also, some numberplates lend themselves to a 3 word soundbyte, ie: DRC could be DiReCt, or Democratic Republic of Congo.

If you didnt know about the game, and it piques your interest, I have bad news.
Gauteng has now run out of unassigned numberplates in the classic format, so they are now moving to a 2 letter, 2 number, 2 letter format... XX ## XX GP.
But 2 letters is a bit too easy, and all 4 letters seems quite hard. I suppose 4 letters will be easier than the recent V,W,X,Y and z combinations closing off the classic format, but I cant help feel that this simple game will never hold the same fascination it used to.

I guess time will tell.

4 comments:

  1. Great gods Roderick, where do you find these completely useless yet fascinating bits of trivia!?!

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  2. On reexamining the website it seems to be Ian responsible for this.
    I confuse easily so this combination blog (comblog?) is going to pose a challenge

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  3. Well... i don't know about a comblog... but Ian is going be posting content on the site... I am of the opinion that more content can only be a good thing for a blog.

    Also, Ian being the massively social creature that he is, it is bound to bring more traffic to the site, which boost my ego greatly ^^

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  4. I think maybe new rules of the Numberplate Game could be established.

    Perhaps each set of two letters must be there own word (i.e. Must be two words).
    The two words must fit together in some way, (e.g. Bull & Cow, Hello Peter, Jungle Oats, Adam & Eve)

    ReplyDelete