I just hit level 9 and ran into a radical called (yaut? yurt?). I don’t even know what that is, let alone spell it or use it as a mnemonic. How often do these kinds of situations happen, and what should I do when I run into them? (For my specific problem, but also for any situation where I don’t understand the mnemonic as well.)
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This is a yurt. It’s like a permanent tent.
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Just have to make up your open mnemonic. All the Star Wars and Lord Of The Rings mnemonics are completely lost on me.
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Just wait until you get to ford. I wasn’t aware a ford was anything other than a shitty US vehicle.
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Just look it up. When I ran into the mnemonic for the kanji 牛 which said something along the lines of, “You’ve probably heard of Wagyu Beef, right? Well then that will make this easy!” I’ve been a vegetarian for 20 years, so I had no idea what the heck this was.
I googled Wagyu beef and read an entire article about it. I’m confident I will remember this reading for the rest of my life. That kind of research and reinforcement is good for your learning, and you should see it as an opportunity rather than a stumbling block. I hope this helps.
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Yeah, I totally feel your pain! For me mostly reading mnemonics. I can never recall “aardvark”, for example.
I’d say try to memorize the radicals after researching the object they represent because they are used quite often.
But for other things, just come up with a mnemonic that makes sense to you.
For instance, I remember 運ぶ as carrying a box (はこ).
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Well, when it happens to me, I just look it up in wikipedia.
Also, as @DaisukeJigen さん has pointed out, whenever you feel like a mnemonics doesn’t work for you as well as you’d like, try making your own - that’s what I do.
Come to think of it, lately I pretty much make all mnemonics for myself, because I found that it works better for me. When I can, I try to make something that rhymes, for example,
浮 - “Tsunami, cleat and child are floating in the wild”.
Or 受 - “Cleat, forehead, stool - accept, you, fool!” (yes, this one is insulting, but it makes it even easier to remember).
When I can’t find the rhyme, I go for a single sentence-mnemonics, for example,
落 - “flowers that have received the tsunami’s kiss, will fall” or
険 - “Building a squid can be risky!”
Anyway, best of luck with your studies; I hope these minor difficulties would not demotivate you! 
You can add your own name for the radicals as a user synonym and then just answer with that.
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Trying out “Yogurt” and “Mechanical canopy” as synonyms, one for the more relatable pun on “yurt” and one for the fact that it’s a canopy with a grid thingie under it. Hopefully they work well enough with the kanji I’ll have to use them for.
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