Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /42 of 56

Geometry Difficulty 6.7 National Olympiad Prove it JBMO

Problem:
A point PP lies in the interior of the triangle ABCA B C. The lines AP,BPA P, B P, and CPC P intersect BC,CAB C, C A, and ABA B at points D,ED, E, and FF, respectively. Prove that if two of the quadrilaterals ABDE,BCEF,CAFD,AEPF,BFPDA B D E, B C E F, C A F D, A E P F, B F P D, and CDPEC D P E are concyclic, then all six are concyclic.

Solution

Solution:
We first prove the following lemma:
Lemma 1. Let ABCDA B C D be a convex quadrilateral and let ABCD=EA B \cap C D=E and BCDA=FB C \cap D A=F. Then the circumcircles of triangles ABF,CDF,BCEA B F, C D F, B C E and DAED A E all pass through a common point PP. This point lies on line EFE F if and only if ABCDA B C D is concyclic.
Proof. Let the circumcircles of ABFA B F and BCFB C F intersect at PBP \neq B. We have
F P C = F P B+ B P C= B A D+ B E C= E A D+ A E D= =180 - A D E=180 - F D C\text{F P C = F P B+ B P C= B A D+ B E C= E A D+ A E D= =180 - A D E=180 - F D C}
which gives us F,P,CF, P, C and DD are concyclic. Similarly we have
A P E = A P B+ B P E= A F B+ B C D= D F C+ F C D= =180 - F D C=180 - A D E\text{A P E = A P B+ B P E= A F B+ B C D= D F C+ F C D= =180 - F D C=180 - A D E}
which gives us E,P,AE, P, A and DD are concyclic. Since F P E= F P B+ E P B= B A D+\text{F P E= F P B+ E P B= B A D+} B C D\text{B C D} we get that F P E=180\text{F P E=180} if and only if B A D+ B C D=180\text{B A D+ B C D=180} which completes the lemma.

We now divide the problem into cases:

Case 1: AEPFA E P F and BFECB F E C are concyclic. Here we get that
180 = A E P+ A F P=360 - C E B- B F C=360 -2 C E B\text{180 = A E P+ A F P=360 - C E B- B F C=360 -2 C E B}
and here we get that C E B= C F B=90\text{C E B= C F B=90}, from here it follows that PP is the orthocenter of ABC\triangle A B C and that gives us A D B= A D C=90\text{A D B= A D C=90}. Now the quadrilaterals CEPDC E P D and BDPFB D P F are concyclic because
C E P= C D P= P D B= P F B=90 .\text{C E P= C D P= P D B= P F B=90 .}
Quadrilaterals ACDFA C D F and ABDEA B D E are concyclic because
A E B= A D B= A D C= A F C=90\text{A E B= A D B= A D C= A F C=90}

Case 2: AEPFA E P F and CEPDC E P D are concyclic. Now by lemma 1 applied to the quadrilateral AEPFA E P F we get that the circumcircles of CEP,CAF,BPFC E P, C A F, B P F and BEAB E A intersect at a point on BCB C. Since DBCD \in B C and CEPDC E P D is concyclic we get that DD is the desired point and it follows that BDPF,BAED,CAFDB D P F, B A E D, C A F D are all concyclic and now we can finish same as Case 1 since AEDBA E D B and CEPDC E P D are concyclic.

Case 3: AEPFA E P F and AEDBA E D B are concyclic. We apply lemma 1 as in Case 2 on the quadrilateral AEPFA E P F. From the lemma we get that BDPF,CEPDB D P F, C E P D and CAFDC A F D are concyclic and we finish off the same as in Case 1.

Case 4: ACDFA C D F and ABDEA B D E are concyclic. We apply lemma 1 on the quadrilateral AEPFA E P F and get that the circumcircles of ACF,ECP,PFBA C F, E C P, P F B and BAEB A E intersect at one point. Since this point is DD (because ACDFA C D F and ABDEA B D E are concyclic) we get that AEPF,CEPDA E P F, C E P D and BFPDB F P D 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.

Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.

Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement reproduced verbatim; metadata (topic, difficulty) added by this project.