i am having trouble passing the basic tests in JavaScript.

in your example:
const point = (a, b) => {
// your code
};
typeof(point(a, b)) === "function"

the typeof in this case would not be function unless you were returning a function, but instructions specificaly ask this fst() or snd() function to return a number. For this reason I fail on basic test for fst(point(20, 22) and snd(point(20, 22).

Am I misunderstanding something?

In order for typeof() to return "function" in any of these cases I believe the test should be done without parameters/arguments.
For example: typeof(fst)
For example: typeof(snd)