Life In 19x19

That's good to know.

These connect and cut problems make me feel like I'm too stupid to play Go. I nailed everything up to them, and now I don't get any.

I saw that it's ko. There are no threats for white so the only response is to connect at E4. Maybe I just have an aversion to calling the solution wrong just because it's not exactly what the author wanted. And capturing 5 stones is optimistic when white can connect after the peep (that's another ...

I'm going through the problems on GoChild, and it marks my answer as wrong but I can't see why. The problem is #98 of the Basic 900 Connect and Cut pack:
$$c ...

Why do we hold the stones between the way we do? It doesn't seem any more functional than using one's thumb as the second finger. Granted there's a coolness factor, but there has to be some historical reason too.