Please help to explain and do this question.?

Question

The north edge of redville is 200 miles of the northern edge of blueville. The distance between the southern edges is 218 miles. Blueville is 3 times long, north to south as redville. A line drawn due north through the city center of blueville falls 10 miles east of the city center of redville. How many miles in length is each city, north to south?



note: it might be easy for some of you all who understands but i do not, so thanks a dozen! :) :)

Answer 1

For starters, I don't think you need the information about the east-west location of the city centers. Using only the north-south information, you can see that Blueville is 18 miles longer than Redville. If the northern edges are 200 miles apart but the southern edges are 218 miles apart, one town is 18 miles longer than the other, and you are told that Blueville is the longer town. You are also told that Blueville is specifically three times as long as Redville. So if B is the length of Blueville and R is the length of Redville, we know that B = R + 18 and B = 3R. If we substitute the second equation into the first one, we get 3R = R + 18 ==> 2R = 18 ==> R = 9. So Redville is 9 miles long and Blueville is 3R = 3*9 = 27 miles long.

This is really a geometry and algebra question, not geography.