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Geometry Difficulty 6.0 AIME, harder Prove it Belarus

Any diagonal connecting two opposite vertices of a convex hexagon divides this hexagon into two quadrilaterals. Six quadrilaterals can be obtained in this way.
Find the greatest number of these quadrilaterals that can occur circumscribed quadrilaterals.
(S. Mazanik, I. Voronovich)

Solution

Answer: 3.

We show that at most three circumscribed quadrilaterals can be obtained. Suppose, contrary to our claim, that there are at least four circumscribed quadrilaterals. Then some two of them are obtained when one diagonal (say, ADAD) is constructed.

Figure 1

Fig. 1

Figure 2

Fig. 2

Consider one of the circumscribed quadrilaterals remained. Without loss of generality we assume that this is the quadrilateral BCDEBCDE. For this quadrilateral we have BC+DE=CD+BEBC + DE = CD + BE. For the quadrilateral ABCDABCD we have AB+CD=BC+ADAB + CD = BC + AD since, by our assumption, this quadrilateral is circumscribed. Summing these two equalities we obtain AB+DE=AD+BEAB + DE = AD + BE. The last equality is impossible because AD+BE>AB+DEAD + BE > AB + DE for the convex quadrilateral ABDEABDE. Indeed, if MM is the intersection point of ADAD and BEBE, then, by the triangle inequality,

AD+BE=(AM+MD)+(BM+ME)=(AM+BM)+(DM+EM)>>[AM+BM>AB,DM+EM>DE]>AB+DE. AD + BE = (AM + MD) + (BM + ME) = (AM + BM) + (DM + EM) > \\ > [AM + BM > AB, DM + EM > DE] > AB + DE.

Thus the number of the circumscribed quadrilaterals is less than or equal to 3.

There are many ways to construct the convex hexagon with three circumscribed quadrilaterals. One of such hexagons is shown in Fig. 2, where A1B1A2B3A_1B_1A_2B_3, A2B2A3B1A_2B_2A_3B_1, A3B3A1B2A_3B_3A_1B_2 are the circumscribed quadrilaterals.

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