The Bacon cipher you can learn about by just googling "Bacon A's B's" (at least that's how I did it). And the cipher is simple enough (each letter maps to a binary sequence, e.g., AAAAB/00001 = B) to understand without even the slightest background.

I think the only special background that gives you an advantage would be familiarity with puzzles. E.g., giving away the name of the cipher in a riddle at the top is a puzzling norm that might not be obvious to someone not already acquainted with puzzling. Fwiw, I only thought to look more closely at the poem at the top after getting through Farah's easier puzzle on Discord where Farah's poem gives away the less obvious step of solving the puzzle. I think this is also a common practice on Puzzling StackExchange.

Edited 2020-07-15 18:54:27

it is as knyte says, puzzle solving is more about learning how to solve puzzles than anything else. Usually they drops hints in the title about what to do, and give hints along the way to finish it. It is about how you interpret the clues to get the answer.

I am an atmospheric science grad student.

Edited 2020-07-15 22:09:23

So you study the psychology of clouds. Sounds close enough.