Abstract13 C NMR chemical shifts of the nitrile carbon in cyclohexanecarbonitriles directly correlate with the configuration of the quaternary, nitrile-bearing stereocenter. Comparing 13 C NMR chemical shifts for over 200 cyclohexanecarbonitriles reveals that equatorially oriented nitriles resonate 3.3 ppm downfield, on average, from their axial counterparts. Pairs of axial/equatorial diastereomers varying only at the nitrile-bearing carbon consistently exhibit downfield shifts of δ 0.4-7.2 for the equatorial nitrile carbon, even in angularly substituted decalins and hydrindanes.Cyclic nitriles are versatile synthetic intermediates 2 that are readily transformed into an array of bioactive targets. 3 Cylcohexanecarbonitriles in particular have a long and distinguished history as versatile synthetic intermediates, 2,4 partly because of the prevalence of 6-membered rings in nature 5 and partly because of the nitrile's small steric demand. 6 The miniscule steric demand of the nitrile group, a mere 0.2 kcal mol −1,6 allows efficient installation of hindered quaternary carbons through alkylations 7 and conjugate cyanations, 8 even in cases where other methods fail. 9Assigning the configuration of nitrile-bearing, quaternary centers is challenging. 10 X-ray crystallography provides an excellent method for crystalline nitriles whereas axial and equatorial orientations of liquid cyclohexanecarbonitrile diastereomers can be differentiated by their infrared CN bond intensity. 11 In contrast, using mechanistic arguments to assign the configuration of cyclic nitriles resulting from conjugate cyanations 12 or alkylations 13 is not always reliable. An illustrative case is the alkylation of 1 in which deprotonations with iPrMgBr or LDA/BuLi and methylation leads to different nitrile diastereomers (Scheme 1, 1→2→3 and 1→4→5). The divergent stereoselectivity is consistant with alkylations via Cor N-metalated cyclohexanecarbonitriles 2 and 4, respectively. 14 Correspondence to: Fraser F. Fleming. During the synthesis of several diastereomeric cyclohexanecarbonitriles, the 13 C chemical shift of the nitrile carbon was found to correlate with the orientation of the nitrile group (Scheme 1, compare 3 and 5). The attraction of using a simple NMR method to assign the stereochemistry of quaternary nitrile-bearing carbons stimulated an extensive examination of 13 C NMR shifts in a diverse population of substituted cyclohexanecarbonitriles. Comparison of the chemical shifts revealed distinct regions depending on the configuration at the quaternary center. Equatorially oriented nitriles on fully substituted carbons typically resonate downfield, between δ 126.8-124.4, whereas the axially oriented counterparts resonate further upfield, between δ 124.6-118.6. Equatorial cyclohexanecarbonitrile diastereomers consistently resonate downfield from their axial counterparts, even for angular nitriles embedded within cis-and trans-decalins. The 13 C NMR chemical shift provides a rapid, useful method for assigning the configuration of quaternary, nit...