I was down the same path as you for a bit. Doing these for an hour or two every day, but this one held me up the last two days before something clicked last night. This solution is a cleaner version of what ended up being mine. Definitely faster, as well.

I have no idea why those list comprehension results are voted best practice, for a newbie this was clear and straight forward

Because some users are not newbies and they know how to use list comprehension to make their code actually clear and straight forward ;-)