猜
cāi · HSK 5
guess
🤔 犭(dog) + 青 (qīng, green/young) — a dog sniffing to guess what's there
犭 is the dog radical; 青 (qīng) hints at the sound, drifted to cāi. A hunting dog conjectures the prey's location by scent. Common in 猜测 (guess), 猜想 (conjecture), 猜疑 (suspect).
猜 — dog radical 犭 + 青 (qīng)
A semantic-phonetic compound. The dog radical 犭 hints at the original sense of suspicion or wariness, like a dog sizing up a stranger, while 青 (qīng) supplies the sound (shifted to cāi). Over time the meaning broadened from 'suspect' to today's main sense, 'to guess.'