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Croatian Mathematical Competitions

Geometry Difficulty 6.6 National Olympiad Prove it Croatia

Let ABCABC be an acute triangle with the orthocentre HH. Let DD be such a point that the quadrilateral AHCDAHCD is a parallelogram. Let pp be a line perpendicular to the line ABAB passing through the midpoint A1A_1 of the segment BCBC. Let us denote the intersection of pp and ABAB by EE and the midpoint of the segment A1EA_1E by FF. We denote the point in which the line parallel with the line BDBD through AA intersects pp with GG.
Prove that the quadrilateral AFA1CAFA_1C is cyclic if and only if the line BFBF passes through the midpoint of the segment CGCG.

Solution

Since AHCDAHCD is a parallelogram we have ∠ADC=∠CHA=180∘−β\angle ADC = \angle CHA = 180^\circ - \beta, which implies that DD lies on the circumference of the triangle ABCABC. Also, ∠ACD=∠HAC=90∘−γ\angle ACD = \angle HAC = 90^\circ - \gamma.
Since ABCDABCD is cyclic we have ∠ABD=∠ACD\angle ABD = \angle ACD, and since lines AGAG and BDBD are parallel we have ∠GAB=∠ABD\angle GAB = \angle ABD.
Hence, ∠BAG=90∘−γ\angle BAG = 90^\circ - \gamma.

Figure 1

Quadrilateral AFA1CAFA_1C is cyclic if and only if ∠AFE=∠ACA1\angle AFE = \angle ACA_1, i.e. ∠AFE=γ\angle AFE = \gamma. This is equivalent to ∠FAE=90∘−γ\angle FAE = 90^\circ - \gamma.
Since ∠GAE=90∘−γ\angle GAE = 90^\circ - \gamma, the above condition holds if and only if the triangles AEFAEF and AEGAEG are congruent, which is equivalent to ∣EG∣=∣EF∣|EG| = |EF|.
Since FF is the midpoint of the segment A1E‾\overline{A_1E}, the given condition holds if and only if FF divides the segment GA1‾\overline{GA_1} in the ratio 2:12 : 1, i.e. if and only if ∣FG∣=2∣FA1∣|FG| = 2|FA_1|. Since GA1‾\overline{GA_1} is a median in the triangle BCGBCG, this holds if and only if FF is the centroid of that triangle.
This obviously holds if and only if the line BFBF passes through the midpoint of the segment CG‾\overline{CG}.

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