calcium carbide is a very strong base (not quite MeLi, but lots stronger than hydroxide) that also happens to be readily available in bulk...
it would seem reacting it with acetone would drive off acytelene (indeed just going by pka's the pka of acytelene is 25 and that of acetone is 19, so its plenty strong to deprotanate acetone) and yield the enolate of acetone, which should do fun stuff with phenylhalides...
so if it were really this easy, why have i not found anything in tfse about this method?