I've read in several places that i should put a single coin on engravings, especially Elbereth engravings.
Why ?
Put a coin on engraving
nethack
Related Solutions
Of course! Engraving is one of the most reliable ways to identify wands. See this page from the wiki on how to use engraving to identify your wands.
A little usage advice: First, engrave (with your fingers f.ex.) a normal Elbereth, because some wands like polymorph are only identified, when you engrave somewhere where you have something else engraved already. Second, also when engraving with the wands, write an Elbereth. Never engrave any other text, because 1) Elbereth is always good to have and 2) writing Elbereth as opposed to anything else improves your Wisdom stat.
Since it doesn't look like anyone is jumping on this, I've decided to give it a go myself.
Wands
This chart doesn't show every possible way to identify, but I've tried to at least cover all wands. I don't believe there's a way to distinguish between exhausted, cancelled and nothing wands, short of a scroll/spell of ID, but I may be wrong on that.
View diagram in its full glory ↗
Potions
It's highly inadvisable to quaff unidentified potions if they haven't been checked with a unicorn horn first (where I noted you may want to stop). They could be hallucination, confusion, blindness, sleep or paralysis, and that's a lot of ways to be incapacitated. If some or all of these are already identified, or you have a safe place to wait it out, the risk is mitigated.
It's also worth noting that I didn't list all potions that can be identified by tossing at a monster. For example, potion of sickness gives a message, but is easily identified by dipping.
Rings
Rings are fairly difficult to identify indirectly. Aside from the ones that increase an attribute, relatively few are automatically identified by wearing. However, if you're willing to sacrifice the ring (or if you have duplicates), sink identification is a surefire method.
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Best Answer
Generally speaking, for an Elbereth square to be active (that is, for it to actively ward off monsters), something must occupy that square. In many cases, this will simply be you standing on it, but if you want to have an Elbereth square maintain its potency while you're not standing on it -- say, to protect your stash, for example -- you need to drop some sort of item onto the engraved square to keep its warding properties activated. Dropping a single gold piece is a cheap and convenient way of doing this, as it's a low-value item, you're unlikely to confuse it for something else, and you're generally always carrying some on hand.
I'm not aware of any reason why you'd want to drop a coin onto non-Elbereth engravings, however, as standard engravings don't inherently do anything.