Maths Olympiad Prep

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Geometry Difficulty 6.2 National Olympiad Prove it Romania

Let ABCABC be an acute triangle with ABACAB \ne AC and HH its orthocenter. Consider a point DD on the side BCBC. The circumcircles of triangles ABDABD and ACDACD meet again ACAC and ABAB in EE and FF, respectively. Lines BEBE and CFCF meet in point PP. Prove that HPHP is parallel to BCBC if and only if the line ADAD contains the circumcenter of ABCABC.

Solution

We only show the proof in the case when E(AC)E \in (AC), F(AB)F \in (AB), the other cases being similar (the diagram on the left shows such a case).
From PBC+PCB=EAD+FAD=BAC\angle PBC + \angle PCB = \angle EAD + \angle FAD = \angle BAC follows BPC=180BAC=BHC\angle BPC = 180^\circ - \angle BAC = \angle BHC, hence B,C,H,PB, C, H, P are concyclic.

Therefore HPBCHP \parallel BC is equivalent to B,C,P,HB, C, P, H being the vertices of an isosceles trapezoid, which translates into HCB=PBC\angle HCB = \angle PBC. But HCB=HAB\angle HCB = \angle HAB and PBC=DAE\angle PBC = \angle DAE, hence HCB=PBCBAH=CAD\angle HCB = \angle PBC \Leftrightarrow \angle BAH = \angle CAD, which means that AHAH and ADAD are isogonals, i.e. ADAD passes through the circumcenter of ABCABC.

Figure 1

Another solution:

As above, BPC=180BAC=BHC\angle BPC = 180^\circ - \angle BAC = \angle BHC. This means that the reflections, HH' and PP', of HH and PP, respectively, across BCBC are on the circumcircle of ABCABC. Moreover, BCF=BAD=BED\angle BCF = \angle BAD = \angle BED, hence CDPECDPE is cyclic. Then CDP=AEB=ADB\angle CDP = \angle AEB = \angle ADB, which means that PADP' \in AD.

Now HPBCHPBCHP \parallel BC \Leftrightarrow H'P' \parallel BC, which is equivalent to HPAHH'P' \perp AH, i.e. AHP=90\angle AH'P' = 90^\circ, and the conclusion follows readily.

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