Through the use of aryl substituents at the acetylene terminus in enyne allenes the reaction mode may be changed from the Myers-Saito cyclization to a C 2 -C 6 cyclization resulting in a net intramolecular Diels-Alder reaction. As a consequence, the thermal cyclization of readily accessible acyclic enyne allenes allows for the synthesis of complex benzofluorene and 10H-indeno[1,2-g]quinoline derivatives.