Let be a triangle, let be its incenter, let be its circumcircle, and let be the circle tangent to the sides and , and internally tangent to . Let and be the points of contact of and and , respectively, let the line cross again at , and let the lines and cross the line at and respectively. Prove that the points lie on a circle. What is the center of this circle?
Severius Moldovan
Solution

The points are concyclic if and only if . Read from to infer that .
We now show that . To this end, consider the homothety from mapping onto . This homothety maps to the midpoint of the arc not containing , and to the midpoint of the arc not containing . (A tangent to is mapped onto a parallel tangent to .)
Apply Pascal's theorem to the hexagram to infer that are collinear, so is the midpoint of the segment (Veldkamp, 1976-1977).
Since and are the tangents from to , the line is the -symmedian in the triangle , so .
Next, (read from ), so , showing that the line through is parallel to the internal bisectrix of the angle .
Consequently, , so the points lie on a circle .
Finally, we show that is centered at the -excenter of the triangle . The center of is the point where the perpendicular bisectrix of the segment crosses the perpendicular bisectrix of the segment . The former is the internal -bisectrix in the triangle . The latter is the external -bisectrix in the triangle , since , so the triangle is isosceles with apex at . The two angle bisectors cross at the -excenter of the triangle and the conclusion follows.