Such reasoning, together with perhaps more than a modicum of chutzpah, led to the idea of examining the chemistry of benzocyclohex-1-en-3-yne (1) at high temperature. In the end, we were able to show that our imagined reaction was preempted by another process, but much fascinating chemistry was uncovered and we report it here. ... Two routes to 1, shown below, seemed likely to yield this intermediate (Figure 4). Indeed, related intermediates with one more double ...
