Scrabble: Genderstein

The „Genderstein“ (gender tile) is a promotional tile or the German version of Scrabble with the letter combination *IN and a value of 10 points. It has been released on World Scrabble Day (April 13th) 2022 and distributed at various events like Internationale Spieletage SPIEL in Essen, Germany and can also be ordered at Mattel Germany’s customer support for free.

In the German language, nouns describing people (especially job titles) default to the male form ending with -e(r), while the female form ends with -(er)in (e. g. Bäcker – Bäckerin = baker – female baker). Activist groups are demanding a neutral form using the asterisk () as the so-called „Gendersternchen“ (“gender starlet”). In that example, you would write „Bäckerin“ to emphasize that you mean both genders.