Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 5.0 AIME, harder Prove it Bulgaria

Given is an acute triangle ABCABC with incenter II and the incircle touches BCBC, CACA, ABAB at DD, EE, FF. The circle with center CC and radius CECE meets EFEF for the second time at KK. If XX is the CC-excircle touchpoint with ABAB, show that CXCX, KDKD, IFIF concur.
(Kristyan Vasilev)

Solution

We claim the concurrency point is the FF-antipode FF'. It is well-known that this is CXIF\overline{CX} \cap \overline{IF}.
Let P=EFDFP = \overline{EF} \cap \overline{DF'} and Q=DFEFQ = \overline{DF} \cap \overline{EF'}. Then since PEQ=PDQ=90\angle PEQ = \angle PDQ = 90^\circ, DEPQDEPQ is cyclic.
Now, we have
EFD=EFF=90PFE=90DFE=90+(90A2)+(90B2)=C2, \begin{aligned} \angle EFD &= \angle EFF' = 90^\circ - \angle PF'E = 90^\circ - \angle DFE \\ &= -90^\circ + \left( 90^\circ - \frac{\angle A}{2} \right) + \left( 90^\circ - \frac{\angle B}{2} \right) = \frac{\angle C}{2}, \end{aligned}
so the center of (DEPQDEPQ) lies on (CDECDE) (and is on the same side of DE\overline{DE} as CC). On the other hand, it also lies on the perpendicular bisector of DE\overline{DE}, so it must be CC itself. This gives us P=KP = K, and the conclusion follows. \square

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