I'm curious, what's the difference between the two: being told how to do it, and being told where to go to be told how to do it?

If you go read a book like the one I recommended you'll be getting an education in the various sorts of ciphers out there and techniques to break them. The specific answer given above is how to break this particular cipher, thus it's not really far off giving the answer. The topic is more broad and interesting than that.