After seeing a few people manten the 難読漢字検定's 1級 and 神格級 I started to wonder how one can retain such a large quantity of information. While Anki is incredibly effective for learning words, I unfortunately don't have the patience nor time to turn everything I'd like to memorize into flashcards. I am of course familiar with mnemonics, however to create a unique story for tens of thousands of words feels like a bit overkill. I was curious if anyone had any tricks that they found helped them retain nandoku words without too much reliance on repetition or long-form mnemonics.
Examples of things that I find difficult to remember:
Nandoku words in which the kanji do not obviously signify the word
竜葵（うみほおずき）、蜀魂（ほととぎす）、山女（あけび）
Single characters with long readings, especially ones with components unrelated to the meaning
觴（さかずき）、㯳（ともしびだて）
Unfamiliar characters with no phonetic markers
燮理（しょうり）
Non-guessable place names
平城山（ならやま）、六十谷（むそた）
Names… in general
I am in no way trying to memorize everything on first pass, however it would be nice to come away from reading a dictionary or the sort with at least a little to show for it. Any and all advice is appreciated.
by d0xter