There are points on a plane, no three of which are collinear. For every points there exists at least among them which are concyclic. Is it necessarily true that at least of the points are concyclic?
, 2021
Solution
Answer: Yes.
Let us first prove a lemma that if points , , , all lie on circle and some two points , do not lie on , then these points are pairs of intersections of three circles, circle and two other circles. Indeed, according to the problem statement there are points among , , , , which are concyclic. These points must include points and because if one of them is not, then the other one must lie on . Without loss of generality, take , , , to lie on the same circle. Similarly for points , , , , there must be points which are concyclic. Analogously, they must include points and . Point cannot be one of them because two circles cannot have more than two common points. Therefore, points , , , are concyclic which proves the lemma.
Let us first solve the problem for the case for which there exist points which lie on one circle . Label these points , , , , . Let us assume that there exists two points which do not lie on , label them and . According to the previously proven lemma, points , , , , , must be the pairwise intersections of circles. Without loss of generality, let the intersections of with one of the other circles be and and with the other circle and . Similarly, , , , , , must be the pairwise intersections of three circles one of which is . This is not possible as none of the points , , lies on the circumcircle of triangle . This contradiction shows that at most point can lie outside circle , i.e. at least points lie on circle .
It remains to look at the case for which no points lie on the same circle. Let , , , , be arbitrary points. Without loss of generality, let , , , be concyclic and a point not on this circle. According to the lemma, for every other point and points , , , , , the points are the intersections of circle and some two other circles. But in total, there are such points because one of the two circles must go through and some points out of , , , , while the other circle must go through point and the other two points out of , , , . There are only three partitions of , , , into two sets. There is a contradiction, as there are points in total.