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Irish Mathematical Olympiad, 2014

Geometry Difficulty 6.0 National Olympiad Prove it Ireland

The diagonals ACAC and BDBD of a cyclic quadrilateral ABCDABCD intersect at PP.
The circumcircle of the triangle PDCPDC intersects BCBC and ADAD at EE and FF, respectively. The circumcircle of the triangle PABPAB cuts BCBC and ADAD at HH and GG, respectively. Prove that EE, FF, GG, HH lie on the circumference of a circle whose centre is PP.

Solution

Join PP to EE, FF, GG and HH. The details are worked out below for the situation in the picture provided where EE and HH are both between BB and CC, FF is between AA and DD but GG is not between AA and DD. For other possible positions of EE, FF, GG, HH, after replacing some angles with their supplements, the arguments provided will also work.
Alternatively, one could avoid considering several cases by working with oriented angles modulo 180∘180^\circ, see for example Section 1.7 in [1].
Figure 1
From the cyclic quadrilateral AGHPAGHP we get ∠PHG=∠PAD=∠CAD\angle PHG = \angle PAD = \angle CAD. Because AA, BB, CC, DD are concyclic we obtain ∠CAD=∠CBD\angle CAD = \angle CBD. As HH, BB, GG, PP are on a circle, ∠CBD=∠HBP=∠HGP\angle CBD = \angle HBP = \angle HGP. Hence ∠PHG=∠HGP\angle PHG = \angle HGP and so ∣PG∣=∣PH∣|PG| = |PH|.

Similarly, using twice that PP, EE, CC, DD, FF are on a circle and that ABCDABCD is cyclic, we obtain
∠PEF=∠PDF=∠BDA=∠BCA=∠ECP=∠EFP \angle PEF = \angle PDF = \angle BDA = \angle BCA = \angle ECP = \angle EFP
and this implies ∣PE∣=∣PF∣|PE| = |PF|.

Using all three circles, we get the following equalities
∠PEH=∠CDP=∠CDB=∠CAB=∠PAB=∠PHE \angle PEH = \angle CDP = \angle CDB = \angle CAB = \angle PAB = \angle PHE
from which we get ∣PE∣=∣PH∣|PE| = |PH|. Altogether we have shown that EE, FF, GG, HH all have the same distance from PP.

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