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Algebra Difficulty 6.9 National olympiad Prove it Russia

The Mumbo-Jumbo tribe lives at a river. Once two members of a tribe — a young warrior Mumbo and a wise shaman Jumbo — departed to the neighboring tribe with an urgent news. Mumbo ran at 1111 km/h to the nearest location of the rafts, took a raft and drove it to the neighboring tribe. Jumbo went at 66 km/h to another raft location and took a raft there. It appeared that Jumbo came to another tribe earlier than Mumbo.
The river is straight, and the rafts move only at the velocity of the river flow. This velocity is constant, and it has an integer value (in km/h). Find the greatest possible value of the river flow velocity. (M. Evdokimov, reformulated by L. Samoylov)

Solution

Answer. 2626 km/h.

Let the location of the Mumbo-Jumbo tribe be OO, the raft location to which Mumbo ran be MM, and the raft location to which Jumbo went be UU. Obviously, MM is upstream from OO, and UU is downstream.

Let the distances from OO to MM and UU be xx and yy km respectively (x<yx < y), and let the river speed be vv km/h. The time Jumbo spent from OO to UU is y6\frac{y}{6} hours, and Mumbo spent x11+x+yv\frac{x}{11} + \frac{x+y}{v} hours. Clearly, Jumbo arrives at the neighboring tribe earlier than Mumbo if and only if

y6<x11+x+yv. \frac{y}{6} < \frac{x}{11} + \frac{x+y}{v}.

Since x<yx < y, it follows from this inequality that

y6<y11+2yv. \frac{y}{6} < \frac{y}{11} + \frac{2y}{v}.

Dividing by yy and rearranging, we get v<26.4v < 26.4.

It remains to check that the river speed could be 2626 km/h. For this, in the inequality y6<x11+x+yv\frac{y}{6} < \frac{x}{11} + \frac{x+y}{v}, set v=26v = 26 and equivalently transform it to yx<111110\frac{y}{x} < \frac{111}{110}. This is possible (for example, for y=1.12y = 1.12 km, x=1.11x = 1.11 km), which completes the solution.

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