shuài clusters into two senses. The 'lead/command' verb sits at the START of compounds: 率领 (to lead troops), 率先 (to take the lead). The 'frank/rash' adjective sits at the END: 坦率 (candid), 直率 (frank), 草率 (sloppy), 轻率 (reckless). Position is a near-perfect tell.
memory
Both readings share one image: a hand pulling a rope. Pull a rope and you LEAD what's tied to it (shuài). Pull the same rope tight and measure how taut it is — that's a RATIO (lǜ). The 'frank/blunt' sense is the same lead-by-pulling energy applied to speech: no detours, just drag the point out.
A horizontal lid stroke capping the silk-twist scene below. Purely positional, the same lid found in 京 and 高, used here as a graphic anchor rather than a meaning-bearing component.
Coiled-silk graph with four flanking marks for drips of water or twisting fingers. Standalone 幺 is 3 strokes; here it carries 7 because the surrounding dots have fused into the same visual unit. This rope-being-twisted core is what 率 originally drew, giving the cluster of senses 'rope, lead, command, rate.'
Bottom cross-piece — the lower frame or weight of the rope-twisting apparatus, not the numeral 'ten' here. With the lid above and the silk between, the whole graph reads as a rope-making scene.
Filed under radical 玄 (xuán, #95) by convention. 玄 is not a separate component in 率, so no strokes are highlighted.
