Concise Statements

Re-write the following sentences to achieve a more concise statement:-

- He returned all what he took.

I can't solve this one, can someone help me?

- As a matter of fact, they joined and connected the wires.

My answer:

They joined and connected the wires.

Or/ They joined the wires.

Or/ They conneced the wires.

In this example I did the following:-

(1) I removed the sounding phrase: As a matter of fact

(2) I left the two words joined and connected as they are.

(3) I answered the question in another way by removing one of the two words joined and connected in consideration of they have the same meaning, as the structure says that we should remove (prun the redundant) when writing concise statements.