Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /206 of 397

Geometry Difficulty 5.9 AIME, harder Prove it Taiwan

Let ABCABC be a fixed acute-angled triangle. Consider some points EE and FF lying on the sides ACAC and ABAB, respectively, and let MM be the midpoint of EFEF. Let the perpendicular bisector of EFEF intersect the line BCBC at KK, and let the perpendicular bisector of MKMK intersect the lines ACAC and ABAB at SS and TT, respectively. If the quadrilateral KSATKSAT is cyclic, prove that KEF=KFE=A\angle KEF = \angle KFE = \angle A.

Solution

Let ω1\omega_1 be the circumcircle of the quadrilateral KSATKSAT. Let NN be the intersection of line AMAM with line STST, and let LL be the second intersection point of AMAM with ω1\omega_1, as shown in the figure below.

Figure 1

Since EFTSEF \parallel TS and MM is the midpoint of EFEF, NN is also the midpoint of STST. Furthermore, since KK and MM are symmetric with respect to line STST, we have KNS=MNS=LNT\angle KNS = \angle MNS = \angle LNT. Therefore KK and LL are symmetric with respect to the perpendicular bisector of STST, so KLSTKL \parallel ST.
Let GG be the point symmetric to KK with respect to NN. Then GG lies on line EFEF. Without loss of generality, assume GG lies on ray MFMF. We obtain
KGE=KNS=SNM=KLA=180KSA \angle KGE = \angle KNS = \angle SNM = \angle KLA = 180^\circ - \angle KSA
(when K=LK=L, KLA\angle KLA refers to the angle between ALAL and the tangent to ω\omega at LL). Hence K,G,E,SK,G,E,S form a cyclic quadrilateral. Because KSGTKSGT is a parallelogram, we know KEF=KSG=180TKS=A\angle KEF = \angle KSG = 180^\circ - \angle TKS = \angle A. Also, since KE=KFKE = KF, by symmetry we get KFE=KEF=A\angle KFE = \angle KEF = \angle A.

Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.

Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement translated into English from zh; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.