I hate patterns that are like the one you described. I always want to contact whoever designed the pattern & give he/she my comments, then ask....did anyone test this pattern? Sometimes, corrections that are found after a pattern has been printed are posted on a website by the person authoring the pattern. I did a search in Yahoo & came up with this website that has a "contact me" tab.
http://stitchinsis.com/catalog/ I would ask them these questions you are asking of us. They will know what they intended for the pattern to say. Hope you get an answer.