I'm sure no one here actually figures out multiplication for each and every problem they encounter with the understanding method, though I agree that understanding is key to building on math knowledge.
A mathy kid will go through process of figuring out the multiplication facts, and will understand what they're doing, but after a while these facts will also become available to instant recall. The point is, this process is profoundly different to resorting to an arbitrary collection of gimmicky memorization tricks. The latter is highly undesirable, though I can see there could be pragmatic/desperation reasons for doing it. I would think it would be better that if one couldn't reliably recall the basic 1-digit arithmetic facts, then they move on to learning multidigit arithmetic with a printout of the 1-digit facts to refer to as needed.
