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Geometry Difficulty 6.0 National Olympiad Prove it United States

Let AA, BB, CC, DD be four points such that no three are collinear and DD is not the orthocenter of triangle ABCABC. Let PP, QQ, RR be the orthocenters of △BCD\triangle BCD, △CAD\triangle CAD, △ABD\triangle ABD, respectively. Suppose that lines APAP, BQBQ, CRCR are pairwise distinct and are concurrent. Show that the four points AA, BB, CC, DD lie on a circle.

Solution

Figure 1

Proof. Note that AQ‾∥BP‾\overline{AQ} \parallel \overline{BP}, as both are perpendicular to CD‾\overline{CD}. Since lines APAP and BQBQ are distinct, lines AQAQ and BPBP are distinct.
By symmetric reasoning, we get that AQCPBRAQCPBR is a hexagon with opposite sides parallel and concurrent diagonals as AP‾\overline{AP}, BQ‾\overline{BQ}, CR‾\overline{CR} meet at TT. This implies that the hexagon is centrally symmetric about TT; indeed
ATTP=TQBT=CTTR=TPAT \frac{AT}{TP} = \frac{TQ}{BT} = \frac{CT}{TR} = \frac{TP}{AT}
so all the ratios are equal to +1+1.
Next, PD‾⊥BC‾∥QR‾\overline{PD} \perp \overline{BC} \parallel \overline{QR}, so by symmetry we get DD is the orthocenter of △PQR\triangle PQR. This means that TT is the midpoint of DH‾\overline{DH} as well. □

Corollary
The configuration is now symmetric: we have four points AA, BB, CC, DD, and their reflections in TT are four orthocenters PP, QQ, RR, HH.
Let SS be the centroid of {A,B,C,D}\{A, B, C, D\}, and let OO be the reflection of TT in SS. We are ready to conclude:
Claim — AA, BB, CC, DD are equidistant from OO.
Proof. Let A′A', O′O', S′S', T′T', D′D' be the projections of AA, OO, SS, TT, DD onto line BCBC.
Then T′T' is the midpoint of A′D′‾\overline{A'D'}, so S′=14(A′+D′+B+C)S' = \frac{1}{4}(A' + D' + B + C) gives that O′O' is the midpoint of BC‾\overline{BC}.
Thus OB=OCOB = OC and we're done. □

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