Arizona License Plate Unscrambler
Enter a five-, six-, or seven-character “alphabet soup” plate here and the unscrambler will rearrange its characters into a more familiar right-to-left incrementation order. It will also tell you the plate's ordinal position in the issuing sequence (e.g. it's the 3,547th combination in the series or whatever). This calculation accounts for the fact that I, O, Q, and U are omitted, but does not subtract for censored combinations like ASS, etc. Learn more about Arizona license plates on the Arizona Highs Page.
A Little Background
Under the former AAA0000 format, highs were easy to spot and calculate. Plate numbers ascended predictably, like a car odometer—BFD3547 was followed by BFD3548, BFD3549, BFD3550, and so on. After BFD9999 was issued, the next in sequence was BFE0001. ('0000' was always skipped.)
All of that changed on April 15, 2020, when that format was abandoned and switched to an “alphabet soup” mashup of letters and numerals. Simultaneously, most distinctive formats for specialty plates (e.g. "AG" for Agriculture, "AH" for Arizona Historical Society, "DB" for Diamondbacks, etc.) were abandoned. Thenceforth, all specialty designs and some non-passenger types drew from common alphanumeric series of 5, 6, or 7 characters.
The New Normal
New conventions challenge the untrained eye in spotting highs:
- All character positions accept both letters and numerals—except one position which is always numeric.
- The mixed alphanumeric positions first run through the letters A - Z (skipping I, O, Q, and U) and then the numerals 0 - 9.
- Incrementation no longer occurs neatly from right to left. The new order is consistent but unconventional—as if the middle digit of your odometer were the first one to spin.