Radical 穴

7 strokes

hole 穴 (616a) + nine 九 (38) = investigate 究

研究 (606) yánjiū research

In one of the holes on the golf course they found a baseball, and decided to investigate how it had got there. / It turned out that two giants had been joking around (playing mini-golf and using the baseball as a golf ball).

house 宀 (91a) + eight 八 (20) = hole 穴

When this appears at the top of characters, you will sometimes see the legs curl (so that they look like “boy” rather than “eight”).

The house where the octopus lives is so small that he had to make holes in the walls for his tentacles to poke through. / [No pronunciation needed]