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Is there an incorrect plural in the preamble description of the endgame?

Gave up yesterday after 6 hours in favour of the football. A resounding PDM this morning allowed me to complete this after a further hours work. Very clever construction and end game. Sorting out the across clues was (for me) extremely tricky and I was only able to parse quite a few of them once a discovered the message defining how to complete the puzzle. I had never heard of one down, but google to the rescue once again.

Thanks hw7

A fair question, Twit. I had wondered the same.

I think that the plural is OK, because of the instructions for the across clues. But your perspective is also valid.

Thanks rhsl. I suppose a lawyer would say the singular includes the plural and vice versa. It just meant I did a bit more grid staring than was obviously necessary.

I can see three grammatical objects to which the word in question could apply and two of those require a plural, so my take was that the least misleading approach to this was to use the plural. Using the singular might have resulted in a lot of second guessing and even more grid stare. I thought the 'borrowed/lent and then returned' formulation was unnecessarily elaborate until the penny dropped.

Just a general question.
I wonder how the marker determines the first three correct entries when there are emails and letters to open?

I would put all the correct entrants onto a spreadsheet and use a random number generator but I can imagine slips of paper being drawn from a top hat.