How to optimize this Python code (from ThinkPython, Exercise 10.10)

Question

I\'m working through Allen Downey\'s How To Think Like A Computer Scientist, and I\'ve written what I believe to be a functionally correct solution to Exercise 10.1

Answer 1

Do it the other way around: Iterate through all words and split them into two words by taking the odd and even letters. Then look up those two words in the dictionary.

As a side node, the two words that interlock must not necessarily have the same length -- the lengths might also differ by 1.

Some (untested) code:

words = set(line.strip() for line in open("words"))
for w in words:
    even, odd = w[::2], w[1::2]
    if even in words and odd in words:
        print even, odd