How does one remember the stroke order for the lower half of 鼈? It's pretty insane, and RTK3 is not helpful with it. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

http://jisho.org/words?jap=*鼈*&eng=&dict...=relevance

...wow
Nothing helpful there. ^__^' sorry

[Katsuo]

See the SOD for 蠅 (housefly, a variant of 蝿) which includes the same part. The stroke order diagram is from gahoh.

As for remembering how to write it, I think it mostly follows usual writing practices. I divide it into three sections:
1) First four strokes are like the top of a capital "T" drawn in outline form.
2) The two long vertical strokes forming the stalk of the "T" are unusual though (one straight, the other a "fishhook" that curves under it). I prefer to write the straight one first, but some of the sources I've checked do it the other way.
3) The last seven strokes are similar to the "staples" in 興 (with truncated verticals), or alternatively think of them as looking like capital "E"s, except the first has a sloping top and the second is a mirror image.

I don't have a proper story for it, just a memory jog: "Eel for tea ("T") tonight. It's stapled to the plate to stop it wriggling around." This is one character where writing it a few times does help with memory.

There are quite a few variations of "eels" in other characters.

gyuujuice Wrote:http://jisho.org/words?jap=*鼈*&eng=&dict...=relevance

...wow
Nothing helpful there. ^__^' sorry

It's curious that when I click on the link in your post, the page that comes up is basically empty (meaning, "no hits"). But I noticed that the URL shown in the location bar for this page looked strange; the 鼈 part had been mapped to an ASCII-based code. So I copied the link into the location bar, and fixed the 鼈 part, I did get 9 hits.

And yet, the text of the URL as you posted is correct, as far as I can tell. I don't understand why/how the mangling of it happens.

Still, those 9 hits look rather obscure. It's hard for me to understand why this character made the cut for RTK. Its frequency seems to be below the measurable level (according to the frequency data I have). So, yes, the chances that I'll ever need to write this character are very slim.

Katsuo Wrote:See the SOD for 蠅 (housefly, a variant of 蝿) which includes the same part. The stroke order diagram is from gahoh.

As for remembering how to write it, I think it mostly follows usual writing practices. I divide it into three sections:
1) First four strokes are like the top of a capital "T" drawn in outline form.
2) The two long vertical strokes forming the stalk of the "T" are unusual though (one straight, the other a "fishhook" that curves under it). I prefer to write the straight one first, but some of the sources I've checked do it the other way.
3) The last seven strokes are similar to the "staples" in 興 (with truncated verticals), or alternatively think of them as looking like capital "E"s, except the first has a sloping top and the second is a mirror image.

I don't have a proper story for it, just a memory jog: "Eel for tea ("T") tonight. It's stapled to the plate to stop it wriggling around." This is one character where writing it a few times does help with memory.

Thank you much, both for the mnemonics and for the links!

Or here
http://kakijun.main.jp/page/bin200.html

and

oh dear I have a dirty dirty mind

Weird, I don't think I made a mistake copying the link.

"So, yes, the chances that I'll ever need to write this character are very slim."
Except when showing off or talking about your passion for turtles.

The bottom half is a tadpole that the poor snapping turtle (who has lost his snap) had to put into his shredder so that he could eat it, isn't it obvious? /sarcasm...

my goodness, the things that the heisig method has done to my mind...