How to handle an advisor who communicates badly and puts me in a bad position as a result?
As an advisor who often thinks I'm giving clear instructions when I'm not :), here's one thing that will require a certain amount of pain, but might help long term. 

You might have tried this already, but when you're given somewhat vague instructions by your advisor, try to spell them out as precisely as you're able to and repeat them back to him on the spot. 

So your advisor says, "maybe you should try (vague idea) X, Y, Z". 

You  say, "so you mean that for (vague idea) X I should try A, B, ??". 

Your advisor might say, "no no, I really meant D" while frowning fiercely at you. But at least then you've managed to get something precise out of him. 

Or (and this has happened to me), your advisor says "Hmm. you're right: X doesn't make any sense: ignore that". In which case you've successfully eliminated one unclear option. 

The "pain" here is that your first few meetings might go quite badly while you both struggle to learn to communicate with each other. But I suspect that if your advisor is merely not thinking carefully enough about the ideas he's suggesting, this will force him to think more clearly about them.