presented with a simplified character that you don’t know (and no accompanying pinyin pronunciation), it’s not possible to look it up in a dictionary by radical/stroke count.
so, when i encountered a new word, i would write on an index card clustering simplified words by their stroke counts and “translate” to my beloved traditional characters. yeah, i’m a geek.
Yeah, you are a geek! I can’t write in any language except English (well, some French), so I am in awe of you.