I've never won it without rampant savefile-copying, and that was before they added extra plane-levels to the ascension process.
In my most recent set of attempts, I had one character that had real promise. My Valk had Mjollnir and the Gauntlets of Power needed to throw it. She cleared the Mines and got the luckstone, she cleared Sokoban and got the Amulet of Reflection, and she had two Amulets of Life Saving from a shop. She snuffed Medusa without much trouble, then cleared out the Castle with gratuitous overuse of engraving Elbereth.
She got the wand of wishing, got some new toys from it, and was ready to party. Hey, what's this? Two tins of spinach! Those raise your strength (as dumbass forgets that the Gauntlets already raised it to 25). Eat #1, Valk goes to "Satiated." Eat #2... "You choke on your food. Do you want your possessions identified?" RAAAAAAAAAAAAGH! Apparently, spinach is so nutritious that it leaped past the "You're having trouble getting this down" prompt and went right to my Valk bursting like the poor bastard in Seven.
Then there was a subsequent Samurai who found out the hard way that Boots of Water Walking will NOT keep electric eels from drowning you like an oilskin cloak will...
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