---
id: road-sign-math
title: Road Sign Math
summary: A game of finding road signs whose numbers form an equation, begun as a blog in 2005, rebooted as a wiki in 2011 and as a blog again in 2023.
collection: Games and communities
status: active
url: https://www.roadsignmath.xyz/
started: 2005-02-13
topics:
  - mediawiki
  - play
  - archives
sources:
  - kind: website
    url: https://www.roadsignmath.xyz/
    role: website
    sitemap: https://www.roadsignmath.xyz/sitemap.xml
    feed: https://www.roadsignmath.xyz/feed.xml
  - kind: website
    url: https://www.thingelstad.com/2023/10/21/road-sign-math.html
    role: reference
  - kind: website
    url: https://www.thingelstad.com/projects/road-sign-math/
    role: reference
  - kind: github
    repository: jthingelstad/rsm.thingelstad.com
    role: historical
connections: []
story:
  color: "#287454"
  introduction: A little mathematics. A lot of looking around.
  engineering:
    - The original site, launched in 2005, had rules for play, a scoring system and scoreboards for players and states.
    - In 2011 it moved from a blog to a wiki so players could submit and maintain their own signs.
    - The 2023 reboot is a simple blog on Micro.blog that typesets each sign’s equation with MathJax.
  stack:
    - Micro.blog
    - MathJax
    - MediaWiki
  related:
    - planet-kubb
    - open-loop
  questions:
    - How did Road Sign Math start?
    - Why was Road Sign Math rebooted instead of relaunched?
  source: https://www.roadsignmath.xyz/
  sourceLabel: See the signs
  started: Played since 2005
page: https://thingelstad.xyz/things/road-sign-math/
---

# Road Sign Math

A game of finding road signs whose numbers form an equation, begun as a blog in 2005, rebooted as a wiki in 2011 and as a blog again in 2023.

Road Sign Math is a driving game: find a road sign whose numbers make a valid equation, photograph it, and share it. It began with a sign on I-94 East toward the Twin Cities that I passed coming home from visiting family in North Dakota, which listed distances of 3, 33 and 99 miles: 3 times 33 equals 99. On [Open Loop #1](https://www.thingelstad.com/projects/open-loop/1-big-fuzzy-dead-cat/) I recalled that my friend Jim told me I should make a website, “and so that day I did a website.”

I [launched the site](https://www.thingelstad.com/2010/02/13/010000.html) on February 13, 2005, as a blog of signs on .Text, moved it to [WordPress](https://www.thingelstad.com/2007/08/17/t212185032.html) in August 2007, and as other people sent in their own it gained rules, a scoring system and scoreboards for players and states. Signs came from all 50 states and most continents, including one from the Serengeti; by 2012 there were over 200. In 2011 I rebooted it for the first time, as a wiki, so players could maintain their own signs; an iOS app for capturing signs was considered but never built. In 2016, during a round of [technical downsizing](https://www.thingelstad.com/2016/05/03/technical-downsizing.html), I shut the site down and let roadsignmath.com expire ([Road Sign Math Rebooted](https://www.thingelstad.com/2023/10/21/road-sign-math.html)).

In 2017 I started a Jekyll site for the signs, [rsm.thingelstad.com](https://github.com/jthingelstad/rsm.thingelstad.com), on a stock theme. Two spin-offs, Road Sign Wordplay and Road Sign Bingo, never got going, and I [shut both down](https://www.thingelstad.com/2012/02/08/shutting-down-some.html) in February 2012 with other “ideas that I set up and then never took anywhere.” In March 2021 a sign Tammy found near Phoenix gave Road Sign Math “a breath of new life” at roadsignmath.thingelstad.com ([Weekly Thing 177](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/177/)), and that summer we found ten more on a [Vermont road trip](https://www.thingelstad.com/2021/08/15/varmont-road-trip.html). I registered roadsignmath.xyz in 2021, and in October 2023 I [rebooted](https://www.thingelstad.com/2023/10/21/road-sign-math.html) Road Sign Math a second time, back to a simple blog: “Just my signs. No scoring system or leaderboards.” New signs still appear, such as one in [September 2025](https://www.thingelstad.com/2025/09/01/it-always-makes-me-smile.html).