I believe this post on everything2.com is when I first heard of a game where you could wield a pancake and bash monsters.
If you threw Mjollnir, your hammer, and it accidentally fell in the water instead of coming back to you, you could freeze the water and dig down to retrieve it. (A common enough event that there is even a reddit post about it this week.)
I played NetHack a lot in college, and once in a great while since then. I've never ascended, but I've cleared the castle a few times.
I often played on NAO so my games were recorded. My best game I choked to death on a ration at 2am because I wasn't paying attention.