It's probably on Google, but I'm having a hard time putting into words what I'm trying to do. itertools.product is close, but I also want it to give me smaller combinations whereas itertools only gives combinations across all lists. It would probably be easier to explain in an example:

Example of lists I want to combine: [[a,b,c],[d,e,f],[g,h,i]]

Itertools gives back: [a,d,g],[a,d,h]....[c,f,h],[c,f,i] (27 results)

Output I am looking for: The above, plus:

[a,d],[a,e],[a,f],[b,d],[b,e],[b,f],[c,d],[c,e],[c,f],[d,g],[d,h],[d,i],[e,g],[e,h],[e,i],[f,g],[f,h],[f,i]

There would be a total of 45 results. Note that I'm only looking for combinations between the lists that are next to each other (don't want [a,g] returned). The lists will not be this simple either, there will be a set of 10 lists with 3-4 characters each.

The only line of code I have for this is: list(itertools.product(*thelist))]. I just don't know where to go next on what I'm trying to do here. I have a feeling there's some way to do this with itertools, I just can't figure it out.