Plate Spotted: The Parking-Lot Safari That Turns Errands Into a Two-Player Sport

Somewhere between the cart corral and the light pole that has seen things, a perfectly ordinary errand is waiting to become a sport. The parking lot is already a grid. The cars are already tiles. The license plates are already a randomized deck. All you need is a timer, a pen, and a friend who is willing to take this exactly as seriously as it deserves. Welcome to the License Plate Safari: a 20-minute two-player micro-adventure for people who said they were just running to the store.

The Setup: Two Players, One Lot, Zero Equipment

Pick a lot with at least 20 visible cars and safe walking space. Set a 20-minute timer. Each player gets a scorecard and a pen. Stand at opposite ends of the lot or start in different rows, then work toward each other. The goal is simple: spot license plates, call them out, and score them. You can play cooperatively (one shared total) or competitively (highest score wins). No approaching cars, no touching, no peering into windows. Your feet stay on pavement and your eyes stay at plate level. That is the whole safety briefing.

The Official Scoring Grid (Steal This)

Use these base values. In-state plate: 1 point. Neighboring state: 2 points. Any other U.S. state: 3 points. Alaska, Hawaii, or Washington, D.C.: 5 points. If you spot a plate from a state you have personally visited, add 1 point. If you spot two plates from the same state, the second one is worth 1 point less than the first, because novelty has a shelf life.

Mark each find in a grid with three columns: Plate, Points, Bonus. At the end, add it up. If you are playing cooperatively, combine totals and set a target before you start: 20 points is respectable, 30 is bragging rights, 40 means you found a genuinely weird lot.

Bonus Challenges That Cost Nothing

• Alphabet Appetizer: +2 for the first plate whose letters contain A, B, and C in any order.
• The Diplomat: +3 for a D.C. or U.S. territory plate.
• Vanity Fair: +2 for a vanity plate you can read out loud as a phrase.
• The Long Haul: +3 for a plate from more than 1,500 miles away. Estimate freely; this is not a court of law.
• Double Vision: +1 for any plate with a repeated letter pair.
• The Collector: +5 if you and your partner together find plates from five different states.

Three Phases, Twenty Minutes

Minute 0-5: Scout. Walk your assigned rows and note easy plates. Do not announce everything yet; build suspense.

Minute 5-15: Call. Now you may shout plate names. Keep it to plate names and points, not a TED talk.

Minute 15-20: Count. Compare grids, argue gently about whether that was really Rhode Island, and total the score.

Variants for Solo Players, Couples, and Restless Kids

Solo: Play blackout bingo. Write ten states on a card; cross off any you find. No timer needed, but 20 minutes keeps it sharp.

Couples: Play cooperatively and give each other one steal per round. A steal lets you claim a plate your partner spotted, but you must compliment their eyesight.

Kids: Give them a mini-grid with five states and a pencil. First to five wins a snack from the store. If they spot a plate from a state they have visited, they get to tell the story of that trip in exactly one sentence.

Two players, competitive: Add a rule that the player with fewer points chooses the radio station on the drive home.

Parking-Lot Etiquette, Yes, Really

Do not follow people to their cars. Do not stand behind a reversing vehicle. Do not point at drivers. Do not treat a minivan as a museum exhibit. Keep your voice at a level that says curious, not unhinged. If someone asks what you are doing, say, License plate safari, and show them the scorecard. Nine times out of ten, they will either laugh or tell you about the time they saw a Hawaii plate in Ohio.

The Printable Scorecard You Will Never Laminate

Draw a 4-by-6 grid. Header row: Plate, State, Points, Bonus. Leave six rows for finds. At the bottom, write Total and one line for Notes, such as Saw a vanity plate that said GR8NSS. That is it. The beauty of this game is that it fits on an index card and costs less than the snack you will buy afterward.

Why This Works

Because errands are full of dead time, and dead time is just unscheduled sidequest space. A parking lot is not a romantic destination. It is a grid of strangers with stories, and every plate is a tiny flag. For 20 minutes, you are not waiting for someone to come out of the store. You are on safari. Bring a pen. Bring a friend. Do not bring a clipboard, because that makes it weird.