People ask me what I do when I am driving on a road trip. I mostly look at the landscape - the birds, trees, shrubs, flowers, crops, buildings, etc.. I listen to music and sometimes play a recorded book. But I also exercise my brain by playing license plate Scrabble. The standard California plate has a number, three letters, and three numbers. I use the letters to make words and I have made up my own rules. I don't keep score, that would be too distracting. The very short glimpse of a plate doesn't leave a lot of time for contemplation - find a word or forget it. Of course, the goal is to make a word and one that is already made is a "bonus". My rules are that I can add as many letters as I chose, but I cannot drop any letters. Q, X, Z are wild so can be used or replaced with a vowel, but not with any other consonants. Proper names and places are okay.
The point of this is to occupy my brain and my memory and my vocabulary. It is just a silly game that I play with myself whenever and wherever I am driving.
If I am on the highway there is usually just enough time for one word, if the vehicle is out of sight it is too late to rethink. I saw this one as SHRUB, but it could also be HUBS, BUSH. or probably a lot of other words.
The first word that came to mind was WIGGLE.
Here I thought MAZE, but I could replace the Z with an I and make it AIM. Or probably a dozen other modifications. AMAZON, AMAZE, etc..
Replace the Z with I = MIKE, MILK, etc.
Replace the Q with A = MAY, YAM, MANY, etc.
BUCKET, TIMBUKTU, BUCK, BUICK, etc.
KEG, EKG, ………………?
Like I said, it is just a silly brain exercise. It works out-of-state, and some states also have three letters. But there are usually some California cars around. Californians do travel.
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