ok I've both tested this and read the documentation on the str.split() method and the behaviour between <code> some_string.split()</code> and <code> some_string.split("   ")</code> is different. In the first case the string will be split at every space and the resulting list will have elements that contain the empty string when there are multiple spaces in a row, in the second case the string will only be split where there are 3 spaces in a row. Basically in this case we do need to use .split("   "), not .split()