This person won at life

As Liza, Maeryn, and I were driving from the Jamba Juice after our park adventure, they were happily drinking away, when I suddenly turned left into a driveway, backed out, and zoomed back the way we had just driven. They looked at me puzzled, but I had to confirm what I had just possibly seen. Did I? Had I? I had to know.

Turns out, I had seen what I thought I saw, and Oh. My. WOW!

What I saw:

The owner of this van has won at life.

Completely and totally won at life.

How so?

California standard issue license plates are of the format {number}{letter}{letter}{letter}{number}{number}{number} #AAA###. There are three letter combinations that are not used (KKK, SEX). The letters O and I (that's a capital i), are not allowed in the first or third letter positions, but are allowed in the middle letter position.

Consider the numbers that are used:

ZERO
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE

Of those, three are three letter words:

ONE
TWO
SIX

Two of those are discounted by the no-O-no-I-in-the-first-or-third-position rule.

So, there is exactly one number that can be spelled out on a license plate: SIX.

You see where this is going.

There are 8 * 26 * 26 * 26 * 10 * 10 * 10 (which is to say, 140608000) different standard issue license plate combinations. That first number is 8 and not 10 because 0 and 1 (that's a one, not an ell) are not used in the first number position.

The person with this van has the one plate in one hundred forty million license plates that can be read as "six six six six six".

That person won at life.

Though, really, she probably wishes she won the lottery instead, but we take our joys where we can.