It is not much of a debate that hydrolysis of methyl esters is more facile than their ethyl counterparts. A type of reaction that has probably received more detailed study than the rest -largely due to the monumental work of Hans Finkelstein and his school -is nucleophilic substitution at a saturated carbon atom. To this end, NInC methyl ester 18 was also synthesised (Scheme 3) in a manner similar to that for NInC ethyl ester 10. Scheme 3. Synthesis of NInC methyl ester 18 (nota bene: it proved more challenging to synthesise 18 which led to lower yields in each and every single step of its synthesis relative to that for 10, and that this should be so is a corollary of its irksome physical properties.