

The fastest NetHack death: losing without ever taking control of the character - kibwen
http://tasvideos.org/3080S.html

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kibwen
The speedrun submitter goes into more detail, but here's the gist:

 _" In the game itself, a female Tourist comes into the dungeon, finds a shiny
artifact silver saber (Grayswandir) on the stairs she entered by (probably the
most unlikely thing to manipulate in the run), picks it up (the default
options pick up all items you come across), takes damage from touching the
artifact (a 1 in 4 chance for an unintelligent crossaligned artifact like the
lawful Grayswandir for a neutral Tourist; there are no intelligent artifacts
capable of spawning there), and dies from the damage (around a 52% chance for
a starting Tourist due to their low starting hitpoints, much lower or even
zero for other characters)."_

