3. (UKR) Let be the incenter of triangle . Let , and be the points of tangency of the incircle of with , and , respectively. The line passes through and is parallel to . The lines and intersect at the points and . Prove that is acute.
Solution
3. Lemma. If are three points on a line in this order, and a point in the plane with , then . Proof. Let , and let be a point on the segment such that . Then , so that triangles and are similar. Thus , which immediately implies that . Note that : in fact, we have and . In particular, we obtain , so that . Since , we conclude that and . Adding these two inequalities gives . Therefore . Remark. It can be shown (using vectors) that the statement remains true for an arbitrary line passing through .
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