L: Too Much on My Plate
Pennsylvania's license plates used to say "You have a Friend in" at the top, and "Pennsylvania" at the bottom, with the license number in between. Some enterprising group or company capitalized on this design by printing up fake Pennsylvania vanity license plates on which the license-number area read "JESUS," so that if you ignored the "Pennsylvania" part the plates said "You have a Friend in JESUS."
This week's challenge is to come up with proposed vanity plates which similarly change the meaning of slogans on other states' plates. To aid in that endeavor, you can first take this quiz, to guess which state goes with each plate slogan. The following list contains 43 plate slogans, representing 38 states plus the District of Columbia; as far as I know, that's all the slogans used on general-issue passenger plates in the US after 1990 (except for a few that say how long a state has been around, or just capitalize certain letters in the state name). Some states don't use plate slogans; others put the county name on the plate as well as the state name; others have had multiple slogans at various times. (Recently, several states have begun offering optional plates with environmental messages like "Environment" or "Treasure the Chesapeake" or "Manatee"; much as I approve of the idea of such slogans, I've left them out of this quiz, along with all the other special-issue plates.) Note that although some states put their official state nicknames on their plates, some plate slogans are not the same as the corresponding state nicknames; only the plate slogans are listed here. Click a slogan to find out what state's plates it can (or could recently) be seen on. Those unfamiliar with the names of the American states can refresh their memories by looking at the list.
- 10,000 Lakes
- Aloha State
- Amber Waves of Grain
- America's Dairyland
- Big Sky
- Bluegrass State
- Celebrate & Discover
- Constitution State
- Explore
- Famous Potatoes
- First in Flight
- The First State
- Garden State
- Grand Canyon State
- Great Faces, Great Places
- Great Lakes (also "Great Lake Splendor")
- Green Mountain State
- Heart of Dixie
- the heart of it all
- Hoosier Hospitality
- Keystone State
- Land of Enchantment
- Land of Lincoln
- The Last Frontier
- Live Free or Die
- The Lone Star State
- Native America
- The Natural State
- Ocean State
- OK! (also "is OK!")
- ...on my mind
- Preserve the Spirit / Peace Garden State (both phrases appear on the plates)
- Putting Families First (after 10/1/97)
- Scenic
- Show-Me State
- The Silver State
- Ski [state name]! Greatest Snow on Earth
- The Spirit of America
- Sportsman's Paradise
- Sunshine State
- Vacationland
- Volunteer State
- Wild, Wonderful
Here's the equivalent quiz for Canadian provinces. Those unfamiliar with the names of the Canadian provinces can refresh their memories by looking at the list. One of the provinces doesn't use slogans on its plates.
- Beautiful
- Canada's Ocean Playground
- Explore Canada's Arctic
- Friendly
- Home of "Anne of Green Gables"
- Je me souviens
- The Klondike
- Nouveau
- Wild Rose Country
- A World of Difference
- Yours to Discover
Different states have different arrangements of items: some have state, then plate number, then slogan; some have slogan, plate number, state; and a few have other arrangements. For simplicity, for the purposes of this game, you can arrange the slogan and plate contents in any order you prefer. Also, though different states have different rules about what can and can't go on a vanity plate, for simplicity assume that you can have up to eight characters (letter, numbers, and/or spaces).
Here are a couple to get you started:
Bhadrika suggests:
- Land of Lincoln
- LOGS
While driving through the relevant state, I thought of:
- First in Flight
- ARKOPTRX