I try to explain Nethack to people by talking about cockatrices. They turn you to stone. So you could pick up a cockatrice corpse, and hit monsters with it, and turn them to stone! Well, only if you're wearing gloves, of course.

And then you meet a succubus who seduces you and takes off your gloves so you turn to stone, or you are burdened, try to go down stairs and fall down them instead, so you touch your cockatrice corpse and turn to stone, or...

All of this is of course less fatal if you happened to be polymorphed into a stone golem at the time so you was already stone, but who knows how long that will last.

I can continue for ages just about cockatrices.