It is an adaptation of PAO; I don’t do competitive memorisation, but I did read “Moonwalking with Einstein” as recommended by another member who also had trouble with some of WK’s mnemonics (there has since been an overhaul of them).
If you’re into memorisation techniques yourself you may find the following interesting (NB - credit for all the data crunching that led to both the chart and the frequency list goes to fellow user rfindley):
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Wanikani mora frequency chart (it’s an older post, so you will have to click on the blue gobbledegook at the bottom to see the chart - I tried to post just the chart here, but …
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List of Wanikani readings by frequency (most to least frequent) - you will need to click to view the list. There are nearly 300 kanji readings that only occur once in WK, so I thought my PO system might be more efficient…