The versatility of arynes as reactive intermediates continues to spur advances in organic synthesis including the discovery and development of asymmetric reactions and access to complex scaffolds. Although deprotonation/elimination was one of the earliest methods to generate arynes, the past several decades have been dominated by fluoride induced elimination of o-trimethylsilylaryl triflates because this has proven to be an exceptionally mild strategy (Scheme 1a). Notwithstanding the functional group compatibility of this approach, the primary limitation lies in the multi-step synthesis of o-trimethylsilylaryl triflates (Scheme 1a). The commercial availability of these reagents is therefore limited and the cost exorbitant relative to other arylation reagents. Moreover, the synthetic sequence to access o-trimethylsilyl aryl triflates requires strong bases and consequently the functional group compatibility of these aryne precursors is actually quite limited with respect to the aryl substituents (R-group in Scheme 1a). On balance, although generation of arynes is mild, otrimethylsilyl triflates do not provide efficient access to diversely substituted arynes and novel aryne precursors are needed to continue advancing synthetic capabilities with these reactive intermediates.