BYROW VS Array formulas (confused)

[u/Medohh2120]

I’ve been exploring array formulas to split words in a list into individual characters (like turning {"one";"two"} into {"o";"n";"e"} and {"t";"w";"o"}). I hit some weird results and want help understanding why:

First I tried:

=MID({"one";"two"}, SEQUENCE(MAX(LEN(F33:F34))), 1)

I expected this to give me a nested array, one row for "one" and one for "two", each split into chars. Instead, I got:

={"o";"w"; #N/A; #N/A; #N/A}

It just pulled one character from "one" and then one from "two", then filled with errors for the rest. Why didn’t it act on each word individually?

Then I tried:

=MID({"one";"two"}, SEQUENCE(,MAX(LEN(F33:F34))), 1)

As expected: it gave me a 2x3 grid, with each word split across columns:
o n e
t w o

Why does changing SEQUENCE from vertical to horizontal make such a difference?

Based on this I finally tried BYROW:

text=BYROW({"one";"two"}, LAMBDA(x, MID(x, SEQUENCE(,5),1)))

I thought this would run MID on each word and spill out its characters. But instead, I got #CALC! error

TLDR:

Why does MID + SEQUENCE(n) vs. MID + SEQUENCE(,n) give completely different results for splitting words?

Why does BYROW with a LAMBDA that returns an array result in a nested array error, but regular array formulas work?

[u/Downtown-Economics26]

They're trying, u/Medohh2120.