Highly reactive 1 : 1 intermediates were produced in the reaction of Ph 3 P and dialkyl acetylenedicarboxylates (¼ dialkyl but-2-ynedioates). Protonation of these intermediates by alcohols (2,2,2trichloroethanol, propargyl alcohol (¼ prop-2-yn-1-ol), MeOH, benzyl alcohol, and allyl alcohol (¼ prop-2-en-1-ol) led to vinyltriphenylphosphonium salts 4, which underwent a Michael addition reaction with the conjugate base to produce the corresponding stabilized phosphonium ylides 5 (Scheme). Wittig reaction of the stabilized phosphonium ylides with ninhydrin (6) led to the corresponding densely functionalized 2H-indeno[2,1-b]furans 10 in fairly good yields ( Table 1). The structures of the final products were confirmed by IR, 1 H-and 13 C-NMR spectroscopy, and mass spectrometry. The configuration of dimethyl 8,8a-dihydro-8-oxo-8a-(2,2,2-trichloroethoxy)-2H-indeno[2,1-b]furan-2,3-dicarboxylate (10a) was established by a single-crystal X-ray structure determination, establishing that the one-pot multicomponent condensation reaction was completely diastereoselective.Introduction. -Compounds with an ideno[2,1-b]furan or -pyrrole skeleton have attracted interest in bioorganic, natural-products, and medicinal chemistry. They show pharmaceutical and biological activities including antimicrobial and antifungal effects [1 -4].For years, acetylenic esters have attracted the attention of organic chemists, mostly as Michael acceptors [5]. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest on the applications of acetylenic esters in multicomponent syntheses [5] [6], specially for preparing stabilized phosphonium ylides [7 -13]. Due to atom economy, convergent character, and simplicity of one-pot procedures, multicomponent condensation reactions have great potentials in synthesis. The development of novel multicomponent condensation reactions is also receiving growing interest from industrial-chemistry research groups, and represents a challenge for organic chemists [5] [6].Based on our literature survey, only few methods have been reported in the literature for the synthesis of 2H-indeno[2,1-b]furans [2] [3]. These protocols are multi-step in nature reports on the synthesis of 2H-indeno[2,1-b]furans are fairly rare [2] [3].In the past, we have established a convenient one-pot method for preparing stabilized phosphonium ylides utilizing in situ generation of the phosphonium salts [8 -13]. As part of our ongoing program to develop efficient and robust methods for the