License Plate Trivia
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65 free License Plate trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
68 free License plate trivia questions with answers. License plates are the most-read documents on Earth and almost nobody knows their history. This quiz covers the whole story: the Paris ordinance of 1893, the leather and porcelain tags of early motoring, wartime fiberboard, and the 1956 deal that fixed the six-by-twelve-inch size still on every North American car. You will meet the state slogans and the fights behind them, from Idaho's 1928 potato to the Supreme Court case over Live Free or Die, plus Delaware's six-figure low-number market, prison plate shops, D.C.'s protest slogan and diplomatic codes. Then it goes abroad: British age identifiers and record auctions, the EU blue band, German city codes and FE-Schrift, and Japan's yellow kei plates. Questions run from easy to expert, so it works for a road trip, a pub round or a collectors' night. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia and primary sources.
30 of 65 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which country introduced the first vehicle registration plates, by an 1893 police ordinance?
France
France introduced the first vehicle registration plates under the Paris police ordinance of 14 August 1893; Germany followed in 1896.
Q 02Which US state was the first to issue license plates itself, on September 1, 1903?
Massachusetts
Massachusetts became the first state to issue its own plates on September 1, 1903; plate number 1 went to Frederick Tudor, and his descendants kept it for over a century.
Q 03Which state was first to require vehicle registration in 1901, initially just the owner's initials?
New York
New York required vehicle registration from 1901, with owners making plates bearing their initials; numbers replaced initials in 1903, and the state only began issuing plates in 1910.
Q 04Which state has featured a bucking horse and rider on its plates continuously since 1936?
Wyoming
Wyoming added the bucking horse and rider silhouette to its plates in 1936; the design became one of the longest-running graphics on any US state plate.
Q 05George Maynard was jailed for 15 days in the 1970s for taping over which motto on his plates?
Live Free or Die
Maynard, a Jehovah's Witness, taped over the 'Live Free or Die' motto on his plates and served 15 days in jail; the Supreme Court later ruled he could not be forced to display it.
Q 06Which state's license plates carry the slogan 'Show-Me State'?
Missouri
Missouri plates carry the slogan 'Show-Me State'; the nickname is commonly traced to an 1899 speech by Congressman Willard Vandiver, who said, 'I am from Missouri, you have got to show me.'
Q 07Which state has used the same gold-on-blue standard plate design since 1959?
Delaware
Delaware adopted its gold-on-blue plate design in 1959; no other US state plate design has lasted as long without a redesign.
Q 08In 2008, plate number 6 from the state famous for its low-digit plate market sold for how much?
$675,000
Tag number 6 sold at auction for $675,000 in 2008; only residents of the state may own its tags, yet bids came in from around the world, and number 20 fetched $410,000 in 2018.
Q 09In the state whose low-number plates sell for six figures, plate 1 goes to which official?
Governor
Tag 1 is reserved for the governor, with 2 and 3 going to the lieutenant governor and secretary of state; every number from 4 upward can be bought and sold.
Q 10As of 2014, how many US states used prison labor to make their license plates?
40
The federal government does too, which is why 'making license plates' became slang for serving a prison sentence.
Q 11Which of these states has required only a rear plate on standard passenger cars since 1952?
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania has issued only rear plates for standard passenger cars since 1952; Maryland and California, by contrast, require plates front and back.
Q 12Which state stopped requiring front license plates on July 1, 2020?
Ohio
Ohio stopped requiring front plates on July 1, 2020, under the transportation budget its legislature passed in April 2019.
Q 13Which state's governor rejected 9,000 pairs of 1972 plates because the flag used dots instead of stars?
Alaska
Alaska's William Egan refused the 1972 plates because the stars of the state flag were rendered as dots; the unissued plates became collectors' items.
Q 21Which food crop was pressed into experimental plates during wartime shortages?
Soybeans
Soybeans went into the composite board Illinois used for its 1943 plates to save steel; the plates reportedly smelled appetising enough that goats chewed them.
Q 22Most modern plates are made from which metal?
Aluminium
Aluminium is the standard material for modern plates because it is light and does not rust; characters are embossed in a press or, rarely, riveted on.
Q 23In 1956, North American passenger plates were standardized at what size?
6 by 12 inches
The 1956 standard fixed passenger plates at 6 by 12 inches (about 150 by 300 mm), a size adopted across the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Q 14Which state's plates carry the slogan 'Sportsman's Paradise'?
Louisiana
Louisiana's plates carry 'Sportsman's Paradise', a slogan first embossed on the state's plates in the late 1950s in tribute to its hunting and fishing.
Q 15Which state's standard license plate depicts Mount Rushmore?
South Dakota
South Dakota's plates depict Mount Rushmore, the Black Hills memorial that Gutzon Borglum carved between 1927 and 1941.
Q 16'Greatest Snow on Earth' is a plate slogan of which state?
Utah
Utah adopted 'Greatest Snow on Earth' for its skier plate in 1985, a play on the Ringling Brothers circus slogan 'Greatest Show on Earth'.
Q 17'First in Flight' has appeared on which state's plates since 1982?
North Carolina
North Carolina has used 'First in Flight' since 1982, commemorating the Wright brothers' first powered flights at Kitty Hawk in December 1903.
Q 18Which slogan has been in continuous use longer than any other, appearing on Maine plates since 1936?
Vacationland
Vacationland has appeared on the state's plates since 1936, longer than any other slogan; Arizona's 'Grand Canyon State' and Wisconsin's 'America's Dairyland' followed in 1940.
Q 19Since 1954, Illinois plates have carried which slogan?
Land of Lincoln
Illinois has printed 'Land of Lincoln' on its plates since 1954; the 2017 redesign put Abraham Lincoln's face on the left edge of the plate.
Q 20To conserve metal during World War II, Illinois made its 1943 plates from what material?
Fiberboard
Illinois pressed its 1943 plates from fiberboard, a composite board adopted to save steel for the war effort; the state returned to steel plates after the wartime shortages eased.
Q 24Which Canadian province or territory has issued polar-bear-shaped plates since 1970?
Northwest Territories
The Northwest Territories introduced its polar-bear-shaped plate in 1970; the bear is cut from a standard rectangular blank so it fits normal mounting holes.
Q 25Which is the only US state whose licence plate number is pressed in rather than raised?
Vermont
Vermont's green plates have debossed characters, pressed into a slightly raised panel rather than stamped outward, the reverse of the usual embossing.
Q 26Which California city piloted battery-powered digital license plates in 2018?
Sacramento
Sacramento put digital plates from the company Reviver on its city fleet in 2018, the first US pilot of electronic license plates; the displays can flash a stolen-vehicle alert.
Q 27Which state had the most vanity plates in the 2007 AAMVA survey?
Virginia
Virginia led the 2007 AAMVA survey with about a million vanity plates, roughly a tenth of the US total; a Virginia vanity plate cost just $10 more than a standard one.
Q 28In the 2007 AAMVA survey, which state had the lowest vanity plate penetration rate, just 0.5%?
Texas
About 3.83% of eligible US vehicles carried vanity plates at the time, some 9.7 million in all.
Q 29Which Canadian province is the only one that does not issue vanity plates?
Newfoundland and Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador was the only Canadian province without a vanity plate program in the 2007 AAMVA survey, which counted some 9.7 million such plates across the United States.
Q 30Which vanity plate earned a Los Angeles driver around 2,500 parking tickets in 1979?
NO PLATE
Robert Barbour's 'NO PLATE' vanity plate matched what officers wrote on tickets for cars without plates, so about 2,500 Los Angeles citations were mailed to him in 1979.