And in fact, it would have thrown an error with an even length too, since range needs integers (3.0 won't do).

just look at other solutions using one additionnal line before the comprehension.

What's the O(n^2) solution ?

Nice...

Test Cases could have been more perfomance demanding

Worst practice ever, on this kata... This is O(n^3). And this is certainly not clever either for the same reason.

People should learn a bit, before upvoting this sort of code...

My bad >< Should study Python2 more.

In Python 2, both / and // perform floor division by default, so there is no error.

If len(word) is odd, range function will return error. You should use range(len(word)//2).