As far as that meteoric steel room goes, using a wand of door creation and unlocking the door also gives you access to the chest.
And if you can't open the chest itself, you can polymorph it into a bunch of high quality stuff!
I was under the impression that polymorphing was a completely random thing. Thus the items you get from polymorphing rocks would be no better than artifacts and valuables.
Last night I was in a pizza place (which also has burgers, ice cream and salad bar) and I saw some girl eating her salad with chopsticks. It took her a good 20 minutes to get anywhere with her meal (maybe a fifth of the salad if she was lucky), by which time her friends were ready to leave.
Not necessarily related to your little "projectu" but I figured it was pretty funny anyways.