“…The reactions of benzhydrol with ethyl acetoacetate (12) and acetylacetone (14) gave the expected β-dicarbonyl compounds (17) and (19) as the final products, [11] and Meldrum's acid (11) gave 3,3-diphenylpropanoic acid (16), almost certainly formed by hydrolysis and decarboxylation of the dioxanedione initially formed by C-alkylation of the enol (this type of formolysis and decarboxylation has been reported for other β-diesters [12] ). Surprisingly, however, neither diethyl malonate, nor ethyl cyanoacetate, nor malononitrile gave any C-alkylation products (which we had expected by analogy with, for example, the reactions of these active methylene compounds in the Knoevenagel and Claisen-Schmidt condensations.…”