[Tutor] String made of list elements' nth characters?

[R. Alan Monroe]

Given a list of 6-letter words:
['abject','poetry','keypad']

How do I derive this list:
['apk', 'boe', 'jey']

(The original list's first letters, second letters, third letters,
etc.)

I have a text file of 15280 six-letter words and I want to robotically
generate 6x6 word squares.

My first attempt returns the right results, but _not in string form_.
There's bound to be a really simple approach that I'm just not
remembering.


def checksolution(sol):
    maybes = []
    for x in range(len(sol)):
        maybes.append( [y[x] for y in sol] )
    print maybes

solution=['abject','poetry','keypad']
checksolution(solution)


[['a', 'p', 'k'], ['b', 'o', 'e'], ['j', 'e', 'y']]


Alan