This weirdass algebra textbook cover got people incredibly confused and excited

Never mind the algebra equations contained within it, the cover of this university maths textbook is a much harder puzzle to solve.

This two-year old Reddit post resurfaced in the last few days and caused a fresh round of WTF-ery among internet users. It's just a harmless academic book cover, right? Well, not quite. Look closer. Closer. Via Imgur See it? Let this Twitter user spell it out for you: https://twitter.com/riarklerise/status/733389885038428161 How indeed?!   Clearly, there's a very obvious explanation for it all - digital trickery - as one reply pointed out: But that didn't stop online commentators having some fun with it first. Because when something like this comes along, and it appears too good to be true, you have a very narrow window before you get official confirmation that, yes, alas, there is less to it than meets the eye. Obviously, the one explanation we all wanted to be true was this one: There was also this offering: https://twitter.com/astrotour2010/status/733549830526509056 But then some killjoy pointed out that a Reddit user had found this image, which is a stock picture of college students holding generic notebooks. Via atcnincometax BuzzFeed Canada got into the mystery of the textbook cover, and contacted the publisher, Cengage, for an explanation. So unfortunately, it didn't involve time travel or some sort of alternate universe-dimension hopping. It was just photoshop done for reasons that not even the publisher can properly clarify. https://twitter.com/CengageLearning/status/733738102171148288 The company was clearly delighted with the viral sensation, as pointed out by a spokeswoman who told BuzzFeed: “If nothing else, perhaps we’ve helped to raise interest around the subject of algebra."