Tangential quadrilateral all of whose sides are tangent to a single conic section has three diagonals that meet at a point. From a tangential quadrilateral, one can form a hexagon with two 180° angles, by placing two new vertices at two opposite points of tangency; all six of the sides of this hexagon lie on lines tangent to the inscribed circle, so its diagonals meet at a point. But two of these diagonals are the same as the diagonals of the tangential quadrilateral, and the third diagonal of the hexagon is the line through two opposite points of tangency. Repeating this same
Magic hexagon gave a less intricate constructive proof. The order-3 magic hexagon has been published many times as a 'new' discovery. An early reference, and possibly the first discoverer, is Ernst von Haselberg (1887). The numbers in the hexagon are consecutive, and run from 1 to formula_1. Hence their sum is a triangular number, namely There are "r" = (2"n" − 1) rows running along any given direction (E-W, NE-SW, or NW-SE). Each of these rows sum up to the same number "M". Therefore: This can be rewritten as Multiplying throughout by 32 gives which shows that formula_6 must be an integer,