CALM CAKE

June 3, 2018 3:32 PM

New Ontario license plate numbers are of the form AAAA-000. They've recently started on C, and over the past few days I've seen three examples of something that I've never seen before: Words in what appear to be standard-issue, non-vanity license plates. There were two instances of CALM, and one of CAKE. Does this happen all the time and I just don't see it? Did a couple of words slip through the filtering process? What's going on?
posted by clawsoon to Law & Government (8 answers total)

Either they usually filter out almost all words, or some lucky Canadian is driving around with a BUTT-420 plate.

(I assume they filter out the words, and specifically chose to keep cake and calm in.)
posted by Huffy Puffy at 3:42 PM on June 3, 2018 [10 favorites]

I would assume they'd only filter out the naughty and problematic words. We have 3-letter AAA-000 plates and I see words like AND or HAD or TOO, but combinations like POT or PIG or COP or FUK would be excluded. If a similar system is used up there, then CAKE would stay but BUTT would not.
posted by Autumnheart at 3:54 PM on June 3, 2018 [5 favorites]

The MTO has some guidelines for what’s appropriate for a personalized license plate. It’s reasonable to think the same principles apply to plates they themselves generate.
posted by cranberrymonger at 4:49 PM on June 3, 2018

Don't know if the Canadian system is similar to the American system, but an (American) friend of mine had the license plate FUN ###. Not a vanity plate; it just showed up.
posted by dlugoczaj at 5:18 PM on June 3, 2018

Not really an answer but I've been wondering the same thing. I've often noted to myself that the AXXX and BXXX seemed to avoid all words, so was surprised to see a word this past week.
posted by bonobothegreat at 9:09 PM on June 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Our former, random Ontario license plate was BJKD, which always made us and our friends laugh and was super easy to remember. Would have been even more hilarious if we'd managed to get 420 as well, but we ended up with boring numbers.
posted by champagneminimalist at 12:27 AM on June 4, 2018

Of course, I can't think of any good examples at the moment, but ever since the 4-letter plates have come in I have been delighted to spot actual words (which, if you believe this one Redditor, seems possible--and it's interesting to note that perhaps the reason why full words aren't more common is that they actually do avoid those key vowels. Again, however, this is putting a lot of faith in one random Reddit comment).

I was sorely disappointed when our latest addition to the vehicular family didn't have a cool plate number. :(

I am more fascinated by the rate at which we seem to be burning through the alphabet....
posted by Mrs. Rattery at 4:37 AM on June 4, 2018

Response by poster: I have found this 600+ post redflagdeals thread in which they've spent the past 7 years tracking and documenting words and near-words on non-vanity Ontario license plates. Part of it seems to be attempting to predict when the next interesting ones will arrive.

CALM and CAKE were both first spotted in September of 2016.
posted by clawsoon at 7:45 AM on June 4, 2018 [4 favorites]