Welcome to Kryptos!
So you've decided to take a few minutes to explore some of the articles, blogs, and web sites dedicated to James Sanborn's CIA Sculpture, Kryptos, just to see what all the fuss is about?
Welcome.  You're in for a treat.

It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would set aside all the intellectual progress of years, and plunge us back into the darkness of mediaeval disbelief.

- Howard Phillips Lovecraft, 1914

The Seduction of Unsolved Codes
Like so many others in the summer of 2003, Gary Phillips first glimpsed Kryptos hours after reading Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code."  An obscure reference on the book's dust jacket alluded to the sculpture and sparked a journey for many that has proved indefeasible.  What began as a mild curiosity for Gary turned into a rather unexpected nine year affair.  The potential for a common amateur, clerk, farmer, lawyer, mother, doctor, or child to solve a puzzle that neither the CIA nor NSA could do seemed to be the initial motivation for many.

To Gary, an obsessive love of codes and ciphers may have been the missing ingredient needed to crack the code, a fair admissibility for anyone who brought their own unique talents to the shadowed CIA courtyard.  In the beginning, it was about the pleasure of exploration; in hindsight, a pendulum of hidden forces that deviantly manipulated the unsuspecting sojourner into the darkest vortex of clandestine information.

Many Avenues, One Valid Solution
Some Kryptos Enthusiasts choose to work alone.  Others discuss their work in small, private clusters.  The vast majority of amateurs and self-qualified specialists eventually join the Yahoo! Kryptos Group co-founded by Elonka Dunin and the late Gary Warzin, if for no other reason than to briefly glimpse at something unexplored.  Several months of independent research prompted Gary Phillips to announce to the sci.crypt Usenet group that he had solved a majority of the Kryptos puzzle.  He was encouraged to demonstrate his techniques at the new Yahoo! Kryptos and Kryptos Sculpture groups.  Within a week, and for no reason other than to humor his austere claims, he was accepted.

"Kryptos Solved -- Verification Needed" was the title of Gary's first post, an unmistakably ignorant choice of words to a group of highly intelligent and welcoming people.  It has always been a telltale sign of unprofessionalism at best — the assertion that Kryptos is over and done with, good-bye, I don't need you, where's my money.

Unfortunately, this is a common mistake made by a good number of individuals assuming favor by virtue of self-proclaimed (not to mention premature) fame.  Not only is this attitude widespread among the delusional who overly-emphasize their humility and unqualifications, it is extremely disrespectful to an otherwise interested group who would have taken their time to engage in such feeble ideas.  Gary learned this the hard way.  The first rule in communicating with people you don't know is to respect them, even if you had genuinely solved Kryptos.  Gary's ideas, by some illogical fate did not fall on deaf ears, something that has become a rarity in the relentless numbers of people who have poised such a stance, and much to the reluctance of the group, his technique was finally heard.  Unfortunately, no one could independently reconstruct the methods.

"I didn't realize I had been playing into my own delusions for quite some time even before those early days in the Kryptos Group," Phillips recalls.  "I thought I had truly solved the puzzle.  My enthusiasm had convinced a few others that I had cracked the code.  How could someone be so certain and incidentally so certainly wrong?!"

Preparing to Embark on Extraordinarily Ambitious Efforts
Time alone was not enough to erase the damage caused.  An immediate change in attitude was the only thing that had ever qualified a presumptuous person to join the efforts of an established clique.  The prerequisites of future communication had never been to completely abandon an original idea, and rarely has that ever occurred.  A shift in perception can produce inspiration and fresh ideas, but not before a personal assessment in all-round respect is both demonstrated and observed.

"I Didn't Solve Kryptos." was the title of a message from Gary to the Kryptos Sculpture group dated September 4, 2004, an embarrassing reflection of the waste of others' valuable time.

Group, esp. Elonka and Patrick,

There is only one thing that stands out.  I was an arrogant prick.  Not only was I out of line, I was simply wrong.

I felt I had solved the puzzle, and I didn't realize at the time how stupid I sounded.  At best, I have contributions, not solutions.  I should have approached the group in that manner from the beginning.

I want to contribute without being an ass, and I agree the solution should not be vague.  I would be better off listening to those who like puzzles as much as I do.

gary

Although he remained a silent observer for over a month, the general consensus of the group seemed to offer a second chance, which was evident in a response to Gary's new palimpsest theory.  Two months following the apology, his credibility was gradually instated when "A Case for 88 Chars" swept the Kryptos Group by storm.  The chatter of vigorous brainstorming flooded computer screens once again.

"It was a beautiful thing.  I had officially contributed something small, and I was beginning to receive sporadic email messages with questions about new ideas," Phillips remembers.  "By February of 2005 my web site, realmoftwelve.net, became the hub for Kryptos cipher illustrations.  I remember the day Elonka asked if she could use my animations and eighty-eight character theories in her Kryptos lectures around St. Louis.  I would never be vindicated for my earlier remarks, but I was finally participating in an eventual solution to Kryptos by doing what I loved, even if my theory was merely an attempt to be crossed of a list.  People generally have a good memory, and once anyone has been marked as someone who is "seeing things," the stigma becomes nearly impossible to shake.  It takes something more memorable than the original offense."

Gary has gone to extreme measures to warn others of the impending delusions and to reconstruct the moments he began to make that wrong turn toward Dunwich.  His memory was always institutional and reliable, having been formally trained in the sciences during the process of abandoning his childhood religion.  How did such a strong mind replace the security of time-tested principles with the vulnerability of notions rooted in fantasy?

Was there a special type of delusion afflicting those who had suffered lapses of memory? Conceivably, the efforts of the subconscious mind to fill up a perplexing blank with pseudo-memories might give rise to strange imaginative vagaries.

- The Shadow Out of Time

A Gentle Word of Caution as You Proceed
The journey that lead Gary to the present was full of subtle ambiguities, not unfamiliar to anyone participating in a relatively disorganized effort.  One exaggerated media spin put him as a "man who abandoned his software business to make time for solving Kryptos."  Although he was closing his business at the time, the events surrounding his increased interest in Kryptos was merely coincidental.  It became difficult to change what had already been published around the world quite literally overnight.  What happens in cyberspace stays in cyberspace, and the exaggerated story evolved with a personality of its own.  Various publications portrayed glimpses into life's fleeting moments with little regard to the full processes at work in the grand spectrum of pursuits.  It was evident that public perception was the name of the game, and as if Kryptos wasn't interesting enough, with it came fictitious stories of sorry jack-offs wasting every idle minute with a code not worth more than the material onto which it was cut.  Lies were told, because lies are sold.

Phillips had to quickly learn how to continue pursuing his interests regardless of the negativity and in light of the barrage of email that coincided each new press release.  In time and without intention, he inched further away from his slandered past and closer to projecting himself privately as the person he had always been.  People began to realize that Kryptos was a life-long hobby for Gary, and that if he was raising a son, earning a second degree from a reputable University, and making time for his piano playing and computer programming, that surely his "obsession" was no more consuming than anyone else's favorite sports team, religion, career, or you name it.

Through his story, it became easy for the Kryptos outsider to understand how the mind could be transformed little by little into a belief system, that when viewed in contrast to the beginning, looked like the pedagogy of a schizophrenic.  Crazy people, however, don't come to their senses, and that's how people who have struggled with this know their episodes are a faint memory of the distant past.  A lesson learned, we know anyone is susceptible, and when it happens, the signs are unmistakable.  We all need someone out there who is not involved, who can check our ideas against reason.  Close friends and family may not always be the best option, because they may tend to encourage enthusiasm without knowing what it is they applaud.  Those of us who have been in the public spotlight for years know that scheduled breaks and reorientation are necessary, and that sometimes a year goes by before we come back to the challenges.

Through it all Gary has had the unique opportunity to glimpse into the private network of the sculpture's brightest amateurs and professionals.  In some manner he is often asked to swear an oath of silence that he not disclose the secret progress if revealed to him, but with consent, tends to collaborate with long-time confidant, Elonka Dunin, the Sanborn-appointed spokesperson for the sculpture.

From the intertwined mix of ideas and solutions scattered among hundreds of individuals who have confided in Gary, an alarming trend in mental processing and behavior, once thought to be unique to himself, had surfaced as commonplace.  "There are many people who became obsessed by this code, and any obsession goes hand-in-hand with a certain social disconnection," Jim Sanborn told Libération, French publication, in 2004.  The lure of an unsolved CIA code permeated by ambiguity had repeatedly "reset" the code-breaker's standard by which clues were deemed acceptable.  It was as if the sculpture itself were whispering, "This is a clue.  Everything is a clue.  You're almost done.  Hurry."

The experienced person knew one thing that no one else did.  Not everything is a clue.  Enthusiasts were generally unaware that Kryptos was built around the theme of deception, and apparently it had hit its mark.  The obscure references throughout the sculpture had been left open to interpretation, and the temptation to be "the one who did what neither the CIA nor NSA could do" gradually coaxed the word-sleuth into an unfounded belief system about the code.  In an unrelated, yet appropriate excerpt from The Times (UK Press), illusionist Derren Brown explained the shadowed sentiment that permeates all Kryptos Neophytes: "It’s all about verisimilitude.  I'm fascinated by things that look real and aren't.  You start out with a couple of things because you like the look of them, and then your standard for what’s normal slowly changes."

So what is K4 Syndrome?  Am I a Kryptos Neophyte?
The remaining 97 characters on the world-renown verdigris copper ribbon, as it was suspiciously called by James Sanborn himself, has remained unsolved since the ceremony dedicating the CIA New Headquarters Building on November 3, 1990.  It is this final passage of text, referred to as "k4" (because it is the fourth section of the puzzle, counting the Morse Code as zero), that has been the agent of disinformation.  Within the nuances that lie in what has purportedly been solved, the source of frightfully delusional behavior has been found to infiltrate every corner of an otherwise normal life.

Much can be observed about how humans invent irrational objectives when confronted with the possibility of overnight fame or the lure of power inherent in an egocentric perspective.  "k4 Syndrome," a term coined by Gary Phillips in a June, 2009 article about Kryptos to express his own past, is a disorder borne of the unpreparedness of inexperience, and it strikes silently like an undetectable parasite.  The positive feedback loop continuously adjusts the threshold of internal logic and produces a frail reality far from one rooted in objective science.  "Kryptos Fan," author of Kryptos - Beyond K4, described k4 syndrome as a condition "when in a sort of creative vacuum that the weird starts to sound pretty good."  Time and gentle advice from anyone not caught up in the vicious cycle of imagined progress has been the only known antidote.

"My advice is to take long breaks.  I've had k4 syndrome, most people I've talked with about the sculpture has had it at one time, and until it has taken its course, no one is ever immune to it.  Better to prepare, and move slowly, if possible, and to ask many questions of people who aren't as interested in these kinds of puzzles.  I suggest you carry a dictionary and use it diligently.  You're going to need one," Phillips' now explains after years of shooting in the dark with Kryptos ideas.  "There will always be people who remain convinced they're only ten minutes away from a solution.  Months go by, and they're still pissed off that you can't take them seriously about anything anymore.  It's infectious."

Gary delights in his daily email correspondence and has had the pleasure of meeting many very bright individuals.  He doesn't mind looking at anyone's work, because he knows all too well that anything is possible.  Just don't get too upset if your idea doesn't have all the glorious appeal to everyone else as it does to you.  "It's all about the journey.  For me, it's about the social ring of which I have become a part — even when that occasional message with religious fervor begins, 'Mr. Phillips, I have solved Kryptos.'"

Gary has been continuing his education at Michigan Technological University as a Computer Science undergraduate.  More information is available at his brief bio page.  He'll see you around, and welcomes you to the game.  Michigan Tech's senior writer, Marcia Goodrich, published Phillips' final comment about k4 syndrome: "When you get 10 emails from someone in one day, and nine of them are asking if you read their first email, you know they have a problem."  But you've just been initiated, so together let's circumvent the illusions and solve that code.  Just don't forget to bring your dictionary.