Problem:
A point lies in the interior of the triangle . The lines , and intersect , and at points , and , respectively. Prove that if two of the quadrilaterals , and are concyclic, then all six are concyclic.
Solution
Solution:
We first prove the following lemma:
Lemma 1. Let be a convex quadrilateral and let and . Then the circumcircles of triangles and all pass through a common point . This point lies on line if and only if is concyclic.
Proof. Let the circumcircles of and intersect at . We have
which gives us and are concyclic. Similarly we have
which gives us and are concyclic. Since we get that if and only if which completes the lemma.
We now divide the problem into cases:
Case 1: and are concyclic. Here we get that
and here we get that , from here it follows that is the orthocenter of and that gives us . Now the quadrilaterals and are concyclic because
Quadrilaterals and are concyclic because
Case 2: and are concyclic. Now by lemma 1 applied to the quadrilateral we get that the circumcircles of and intersect at a point on . Since and is concyclic we get that is the desired point and it follows that are all concyclic and now we can finish same as Case 1 since and are concyclic.
Case 3: and are concyclic. We apply lemma 1 as in Case 2 on the quadrilateral . From the lemma we get that and are concyclic and we finish off the same as in Case 1.
Case 4: and are concyclic. We apply lemma 1 on the quadrilateral and get that the circumcircles of and intersect at one point. Since this point is (because and are concyclic) we get that and are concyclic. We now finish off as in Case 1. These four cases prove the problem statement.
Remark. A more natural approach is to solve each of the four cases by simple angle chasing.