If you know the radical 黑 and 死, then you can easily infer the meaning of 黑死病. Even though the third character is not a radical, you can spot the radical for 'sickness' there. The other component looks a lot like the radical for 'skin'. So that last character's meaning is actually something like 'skin-disease' or 'disease of the skin'. The three characters combined basically means 'black death'. As in the plague.
Some characters actually do combine the meanings of several radicals, for example 孝 is a child carrying an elder on their back or something; it means "filial piety" (respect for elders). But there are not that many of them, and you have to know the final meaning anyway, otherwise it's hard to guess.
And I can "guess" a lot more than hand-picked examples, using this method I've understood everything from store signs and logos to large parts of children's stories. Granted, I've learned a lot of characters also.
There are many recommendations to learn Chinese this way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classificati...