Four corner vs. other methods
Well, I'm a beginning student who uses 4-corner almost exclusively, but I'm not in China. I'm also self-taught. Perhaps if I learned things 'the right way' I would be better with radical lookups, but I find the whole thing incredibly slow and tedious and full of exceptions. Four-corner does definitely have a learning curve, but then again so does Chinese, and so does the radical method. And 4-corner has exceptions as well, just less of them (when in doubt, it's probably a danged '3', by the way). Four corner also works better in computer programs than paper dictionaries (since you can look something up even if you can't figure out how some of the corners code).
Ultimately, the method is losing out because the majority of native speakers don't use it. There seems to have been an attempt to popularize it in the 1980s (and I have a miniature Xin Hua simplified dictionary from the period that I treasure), but it never took off.
I just found out today that there are two versions of the Kang Xi available with 4-corner indexes, so I'm working on finding those. The Large Chinese-Russian Dictionary (4 vol.) has an index, and that's where I started with it.
I suppose it's one of those things like choice of computer operating system: more religious than logical.
As to a contest: Sign me up!
Regards,
Chris Gait
Nokesville, VA