speaking of 士 vs 仕 I was too lazy to check the winter radical to make sure I’m not mixing it with the similar one and then my theory of transitivity/intransitivity would fall flat look at this
Imagine my sigh of relief… so I’m glad @polv pointed it out thank you polv ( ◠‿◠ )
Speaking of sigh - I use it for a lot of the さい items if not all of them instead of wanikanis cyborg mnemonic and it goes really well with all the disaster ones ‘cause sighing is an emotional reaction in itself which corresponds well with a personal reaction to disturbing occurrences, and since we’re on the same level and see さい and ざい a lot I I think I might be able to help you with it even without any specifics on your end, hope this somewhat helps -
・ 在 Exist
・ 剤 Dose
・ 財 Wealth
・罪 Guilt
・ 材 Lumber
As you can see above there are only 5 ざい readings for individual kanji on wanikani and one of them is a mix of both (Wealth).
The さい reading on the other hand has 30 readings per single item.
The only item that has different readings in its vocabulary list is 財 and it’s only 3 words which the only さい reading is 財布
the other 2 are 財閥 which I find easier to write the zaibatsu meaning instead of Plutocrats and 私財 Personal Funds. So I believe that giving this very short list some extra care and memorizing the other 4 ざい kanji as an exception to the rule (さい) will sort this confusion out since the reading of them both in compound words on wanikani is very consistent regardless of their placement (first/middle/last).
The 罪 Guilt one was giving me trouble at first so I gave it another look, and it is no wonder since the xylophone mnemonic is so rare it needed some more attention and it was sorted out quite quickly.
Edit: adding the short list of さい→ざい exceptions, so anyone that reads this will have the full correct information.