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Bulgarian National Mathematical Olympiad

Bulgaria geometry

Problem

The point lies on the side of with circumcircle . Denote by and the centers of the circles touching , and the segments and . Assume that the points and are concyclic. Prove that is the tangent point of and the excircle to this side.

problem
Solution
Let and let touch , and at , and , respectively. Let touch , at , and , respectively. First, we shall prove that , i.e. is an isosceles trapezoid. Assume the contrary and set . Then



and, by the Menelaus theorem, the points , and are collinear.



Then . On the other hand, is cocyclic which implies . It follows that , i.e. is cocyclic. But , i.e. is an isosceles trapezoid and then , a contradiction. Hence , i.e. and (1).

Further, the generalized Ptolemy theorem (applied to , , and ) gives . Since and , we get



Analogously,



Finally, (1), (2) and (3) imply which holds if and only if is the tangent point of and the excircle to this side.

Techniques

TangentsMenelaus' theoremCyclic quadrilaterals