Let the excircle of the triangle lying opposite to touch its side at the point . Define the points and analogously. Suppose that the circumcentre of the triangle lies on the circumcircle of the triangle . Prove that the triangle is right-angled. (Russia)
Solution
Denote the circumcircles of the triangles and by and , respectively. Denote the midpoint of the arc of containing by , and define as well as analogously. By our hypothesis the centre of lies on .
Lemma. One has . Moreover, the points , and are concyclic. Finally, the points and lie on the same side of . Similar statements hold for and .
Proof. Let us consider the case first. Then the triangle is isosceles at , which implies while the remaining assertions of the Lemma are obvious. So let us suppose from now on.
By the definition of , we have . It is also well known and easy to show that . Next, we have . Hence the triangles and are congruent. This implies , establishing the first part of the Lemma. It also follows that , as these are exterior angles at the corresponding vertices and of the congruent triangles and . For that reason the points , and are indeed the vertices of some cyclic quadrilateral two opposite sides of which are and .
Now we turn to the solution. Evidently the points , and lie interior to some semicircle arc of , so the triangle is obtuse-angled. Without loss of generality, we will assume that its angle at is obtuse. Thus and lie on different sides of ; obviously, the same holds for the points and . So, the points and are on the same side of .
Notice that the perpendicular bisector of intersects at two points lying on different sides of . By the first statement from the Lemma, both points and are among these points of intersection; since they share the same side of , they coincide (see Figure 1).
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Figure 1
Now, by the first part of the Lemma again, the lines and are the perpendicular bisectors of and , respectively. Thus
recalling that and are the midpoints of the arcs and , respectively.
On the other hand, by the second part of the Lemma we have
From the last two equalities, we get , whereby the problem is solved.