Just ran into these kanji and both have pronunciations きん and こん but the Wanikani text only covers one of them. I replaced those stories with something King Kong-related which covers both.
Just thought somebody would benefit from this as well.
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It might be simpler to treat both kanji as only having the きん reading, and handle words with the much rarer こん reading as special cases when you encounter them. I don’t think WK teaches any vocabulary for either kanji with the こん reading, for example. 黄金（おうごん）is the only even halfway common word with こん that I can think of.
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That’s the thing. There is no indication that the other reading is rarer and that there are barely any words with it in Wanikani. After I read your reply I went in and looked at the available readings for some kanji like 平 and can see that the ひょうand びょう readings are available to me even though they are literally in no vocabulary that Wanikani has to offer, which supports your point.
Previously I only tried to remember the reading that Wanikani had a mnemonic for and I have been bitten when a kanji appeared and the text said “oh, you use the other reading for this kanji” which was nowhere in my brain and there was no mnemonic for it. So I’m trying to come up with ways to internalize any readings that Wanikani “makes available” to me even if the mnemonic doesn’t cover them. Maybe I’ve ran into an edge case though and this is not an issue that I’ll encounter much or ever again (hopefully!).
Note: When I say that a reading is “available” is that Wanikani doesn’t gray it out, as in, you haven’t learned it yet.
If one King Kong can cover multiple pronunciations, that sounds like a win, even if you don’t need the other pronunciation in foreseeable future.
King Kong and his brother King Kane 
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I don’t use WK’s mnemonics all the time so I’m not sure if it’ll be helpful to you, but when there are multiple (usually on’yomi) readings for a kanji in a lesson, I focus on learning the one that has associated vocabulary in the preview section (and if all the preview vocab uses unrelated kun’yomi readings, I’ll go the kanji page itself and find something). If both readings are used in vocab, I’ll try to learn both but may just focus on one that has vocab sooner.
I think the only time I’ve actively tried to memorize multiple readings at the same time outside of this system has been with 象, since it makes a point in the lesson that the different readings are associated with different meanings. The しょう reading and associated “phenomenon” meaning won’t be relevant for a while for me, but I figured at the time that it’d be worth it as a special case (and FWIW I haven’t encountered any other kanji like that since, unless I’m not paying enough attention…)
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I remember having this issue with Wanikani at the beginning (力 having the りょく and somewhat rarer りき is one that comes to mind, or the げ reading for 下).
My tip would be to only focus on the first provided reading at first, then wait until you get to the vocab to think about the rest. Note that this is what the mnemonic does in this case too, only mentioning the きん reading.
In the end you’ll have to memorize those irregular readings through vocab anyway.
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This is an interesting point. Probably the reason why I try to come up with mnemonics that initially capture as many readings as possible is because I tend to remember the first readings I study the better.
I run into this quite a lot: “I know what this word means, I know this kanji’s reading, but I know it’s not the one that I need for this word. Now… what was the other reading??”
When I study more than one reading initially, I don’t get into the above scenario at all. Of course, everyone’s brain works differently.
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Yeah I agree but that’s why it makes sense to focus on the きん reading in this instance given that it’s by far the most common. You’ll memorize 黄金 when you feel like playing Golden Sun again.
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