How would you solve this challenge using the .index method?

Hi there! You're doing great, but you misread/misquoted the hint. Here's the actual hint shown in the challenge:

HINT: Remember that you can access characters in a string by index

This says nothing of using the index method, which is only available on lists and not strings as covered in this Python documentation. The hint here was meant to remind you that you can access the individual characters in a string through subscripting just like you would access an element in a list, which you obviously did just splendidly!

The index method was not meant to be used here. If you absolutely wanted to use it there are a number of factors here. First, you will have to change the string to a list to use the index method. You will also have to account for any errors that happen for lists that do not contain an "A". And finally, you will have to convert that list back to a string.

Here was my solution that used the index method:

for continent in continents:
    # convert the string to a list
    continent = list(continent)
    try:     # attempt this
      # if the first capital A is found at index of 0
      if continent.index("A") == 0:
        # join the list back together to make a string
        continent = "".join(continent)
        # print the string
        print("*", continent)
    # if the list does not contain a "A"
    except ValueError:
      # continue to next iteration
      continue

This, of course, goes way beyond the scope of the current course you're taking, but I hope it helps!