I remember a game called ZZT, that had an introductory game level in which you were walked through the game features, tutorial like. The game would present an item, monster, object, and explain in a few steps what it does, how to interact, and the effects. Something like that could be done by generating a pseudo random (or fixed) tutorial walk through every time.

Let's say you put an item in a room. A wand. You guide the player through text to use the "z"ap command, what a wand is and how it behaves when used. You really don't care much about what the wand does (or perhaps a little). And on for the game mechanics, monsters and other items. It'd be wise to do them as easy and short as possible, but ADOM is a complex game to explain in few words.

On the other hand, decrypted-Mad-Minstrel information would be almost all anybody could need to know about the game. That is more oriented to ADOM content (special endings, special sites like ToEF, ID, the cities, etc) that helps a mid range PC actually progress in the game. Perhaps on one or various new NPCs? Perhaps the Mad Minstrels explains his songs after certain level/time/if you've discovered the place/quest?

Note: I mention these two because they were the things that gave me problems when I began playing, and got around mostly by spoilers at the time :(.

If a player cannot figure out the riddles in the game, I don't think the game should solve them for him/her. It is much healthier for the mind to solve these yourself.
Are they really that difficult?

Although some people maybe don't like to read game manuals, reading ADOM's manual helps a lot. It is basically a must. A way must be found to encourage new players to read the manual.

Maybe every time a player character dies, a random excerpt from the manual can pop-up and at the top of this excerpt the phrase: "Excerpt from manual, can be accessed at anytime with '?'."

Now a ':h' command got added, too, to be able to see previous hints.

It will be interesting to see proposals for new hints once p21 has been released.