TagTeam: License Plate Game

The license plate game, made for two people in one car — or two cars going the same way.

TagTeam keeps ONE shared collection between two phones. Either of you taps a plate the moment you see it, and the other phone catches up on its own. No accounts, no sign-up, no ads, and nothing to argue about at the end of the trip.

ONE GARAGE, TWO PHONES

Start a garage, read the 8-character code out loud, and the other person joins. That's the entire setup. Up to eight people can share one collection — kids, friends, whoever's along. No app? They can join from any web browser, no download.

WORKS WITH NO SIGNAL

This is the point. Log plates in a dead zone all afternoon; they queue up on your phone and sync themselves the moment you have bars again. The app opens and works with no connection at all.

EVERY PLATE, DRAWN BY HAND

All 101 jurisdictions — 50 states, DC, the territories, all 13 Canadian provinces and territories, and an optional pack for Mexico's 32. Each tile is an original drawing of that place's real plate: the right colours, the right slogan, the right graphic. Ones you haven't caught sit there in grey, so you can see exactly what you're hunting.

SPOT IT WITHOUT LOOKING

Say "Spot a plate in TagTeam" and name the state. Siri logs it and tells you what it did — which matters, because the person who sees the plate is usually the person who shouldn't be looking at a phone.

RUNS, BADGES AND BRAGGING RIGHTS

Name a trip and it keeps its own tally while everything still counts for life. Race to a number, split the board so every plate belongs to whoever saw it first, or just play as a team. Thirty badges — all six New England states, a Pacific and an Atlantic plate on the same day, something new after a month-long dry spell. Every finished trip becomes a card you can open and see exactly as it stood.

ALSO IN THERE

• A note on any sighting — "behind us at the light"

• Capital, motto and two real facts for every place

• Trivia built from those facts, for whoever isn't driving

• Rare means rare from where you live: pick a home state and every plate's difficulty follows it — no location permission, ever

• Search, and a Still-needed list with the likeliest plates first

• Invite someone with a link or a QR code

• A share card for the group chat, and a spreadsheet export

• Ten-second undo on everything

PRIVACY, PLAINLY

No accounts. No tracking. No advertising. No analytics. No location. The only personal information in the app is the display name you pick for yourself. Your sightings — and a home state, if you choose one — live on your phones and in one private database, and nowhere else. Notifications are optional, off by default, and the only thing that ever involves anyone else — your phone's own push service, which delivers an encrypted message it cannot read.