Syntheses and structures of two benzoyl amides: 2-chloro-4-eth-oxy-3,5-dimeth-oxy-N-(3-oxo-cyclo-hex-1-en-1-yl)benzamide and 2-chloro-N-(5,5-dimethyl-3-oxo-cyclo-hex-1-en-1-yl)-4-eth-oxy-3,5-di-meth-oxy-benzamide.

The first title benzoyl amide, C17H20ClNO5 (3a), crystallizes in the monoclinic space group P21/c with Z = 4 and the second, C19H24ClNO5 (3b), also crystallizes in P21/c with Z = 8 (Z' = 2), thus there are two independent mol-ecules in the asymmetric unit. In 3a, the phenyl ring makes a dihedral angle of 50.8 (3)° with the amide moiety with the C=O group on the same side of the mol-ecule as the C-Cl group. One meth-oxy group is almost in the plane of the benzene ring, while the eth-oxy and other meth-oxy substituent are arranged on opposite sides of the ring with the eth-oxy group occupying the same side of the ring as the C=O group in the amide moiety. For one of the two mol-ecules in 3b, both the amide and 5,5-dimethyl-3-oxo-cyclo-hex-1-en-1-yl moieties are disordered over two sets of sites with occupancies of 0.551 (2)/0.449 (2) with the major difference between the two conformers being due to the conformation adopted by the cyclo-hex-2-en-1-one ring. The three mol-ecules in 3b (i.e., the undisordered mol-ecule and the two disorder components) differ in the arrangement of the subsituents on the phenyl ring and the conformation adopted by their 5,5-dimethyl-3-oxo-cyclo-hex-1-en-1-yl moieties. In the crystal of 3a, N-H⋯O hydrogen bonds link the mol-ecules into a zigzag chain propagating in the [001] direction. For 3b a combination of C-H⋯O and N-H⋯O inter-molecular inter-actions link the mol-ecules into a zigzag ribbon propagating in the [001] direction.