ROAD GAMES

Rhymes with Orange, July 24, 2016. ©2016 King Features Syndicate.

The above cartoon by Hilary B. Price reminded me of the numerous times Dee and I - and the girls, back when we were younger - would play the License Plate Game whenever we went on long road trips.

It’s pretty simple, really. All you do is keep track of the various license plates you see during your journey. The only rule is that the vehicle must be a passenger vehicle: plates spotted on trucks are not eligible. Once you complete your trip, you can start all over again. My only gripe? Getting that Hawaii plate is a solid-gold bitch.

There are other Vehicular Amusements too. Another favorite is the Alphabet Game, which is nothing more than spotting signs that contain words beginning with the letters of the alphabet - in sequence. Once you get to the end of the alphabet, you simply start over.

The rules are uncomplicated for this game, too. Signs cannot be affixed to a vehicle, and the words cannot be acronyms or abbreviations. Good eyesight is a sine qua non for playing this game well.

Just as Hawaii license plates are thin on the ground here in the continental United States, so are signs bearing words beginning with the letter “X.” When we lived in Connecticut, we could always rely on a prominent sign in Bridgeport that identified one of the Xerox Corporation’s major outposts, but most places, you’re pretty much out of luck finding that X. You therefore must be willing to put up with a modest degree of frustration when you are a serious Alphabet Game player.

Another Roady Amusement is Green Room, a game that has the distinct disadvantage that it can only be played when there are people present who have never played Green Room before. This is because the sole point is to figure out how to get into the Green Room: Once you do, the game is over - for you, anyway. And despite its not being complicated, even adults can take a maddeningly long time to get it, depending on how their brains are wired. (You want to know how to play? Drop me a comment or an e-mail and I’ll give you a few clues.)

What dopey Road Games do you like? And do you still play ’em? We do!