Toluene. The spectral data and analogy with all previous studies of the silazides represented in Table are consistent with KPTA and KBTA in toluene forming disolvated dimers (8 and 9). Notably, however, we invariably observed bright orange solutions and non-trivial (33%) quench of the KBTA, which is anomalous given high levels of reproducibility in other solvents. We suspected low levels of benzyl potassium forms, which is reported to be orange. This hypothesis was examined by dissolving KBTA (1.0 M) in toluene at ambient temperature to produce a bright orange solution to which 1.0 equiv of pivaldehyde was added. The benzyl potassium afforded the homobenzylic alcohol 10 in 10-15% yield after acidic workup and flash chromatography (eq 5) along with acyloin 11 known to form from other base-mediated reactions of pivaldehyde.