OK, so I'll post my working so far. I'm plodding along slowly with it :-)
Update: This working is all done with the original ciphertext. The same logic can be applied to the correct ciphertext and you'll end up at the numbers that the OP supplied part-way through the solve.
The second hint is a kind of cipher... how do we utilise it?
Convert lowercase letters to a and uppercase to b. Treat numbers as spaces. Decode it with the Bacon cipher.
Decrypting the first line like this gives us a translated ciphertext of
a babaaabaabbaaaba bbaabbbabaaaba a abbabaaabaabaaba
which in turn, decodes to
KEY WOR DIS
Continuing the remaining 4 lines in the same way, we get the following ciphertext and message:
a babaaabaabbaaaba bbaabbbabaaaba a abbabaaabaabaaba
abbabaaabba aaaaabab abbabaa aaabaab aababaaabaa baab
ababaabaab aaabbaabaaabaa ababbabaaa abbabaabaabaab
ab a abbaabbbaa baaabbabaaabbaabaaaaababaaabbbaaa ab
bbbbaabbab bbbababba aaaabba aaaababaaaaaabaaabaaab
KEY WORD IS JUMBLIES REVERSE LINES THEN DECRYPT PLAYFAIR
By following the first directive, we now have the ciphertext of
fEhkQzkQavrPfDFl5f5dRovpOeIFThlFA4oFlfdASifHtpzTfL38f
AooE2ifOeifRpFdr2PfdGmtn1ocAtOVb4PfLfdpam0vROvpoEiFQn
OcaOovBprOvPRp23fdoEiFOvBp8ohPiokEiaOOeif3PafIdfRoVp9
Qf2oeiFRPfdtFaOeuvhpItrEUvheIaOTfavU38fnQOEifOHp9i2Pc
03FidfRpfdOvbpoheOrZrovp7qNOcaot5fSAmVfLFD3OhEOrzPZQV
Now, this is the evil part.
In Playfair encryption, J gets translated to I, so our keyword is actually IUMBLES.
Decrypting with this, we get a string containing digits written out (one, two) and a lot of q
characters which split up groups of digits (it's not unusual for q
to be omitted from this kind of cipher, so they probably represent spaces). It isn't clear just yet what these numbers mean, or whether any should be combined together.
eightxhrexqonenineqtwofiveqnineqninesevenqtwonineqfivefiveqoneqonehundredqfournineqsixqtwofivethreeqfourqtwoqonefivefourqfourfiveqfiveqsevenqtwoohfiveqoneoneqsixfourqsixfiveqonexightfiveqfoursevenqonefourqfiftyqtwothreeqonesixnineqfiftytwox
The numbers are:
83 19 25 9 97 29 55 1 100 49 6 253 4 2 154 45 5 7 205 11 64 65 185 47 14 50 23 169 52
But these are wrong (@OP HOW COULD YOU!?) so we need these ones instead, provided by the OP :P
78 19 25 9 92 29 54 1 95 49 6 247 4 2 149 45 5 7 199 11 62 63 179 47 14 50 23 163 52
Interestingly, all the deciphering we've done so far has been purely alphabetical - the Bacon deciphering was done with upper/lowercase letters and we ignored the numbers as all characters in Bacon are comprised of 5 a/bs, and the Playfair decryption only uses letter digraphs, again discarding numbers.
There happen to be 5 digits in each of the 5 lines of the ciphertext (and they remained consistent between old/new ciphertexts):
83 4 5 5
0 4 1 2 2
9 3 8 32
2 9 83 2
3 5 7 30