Why? Python supports functions pretty well. So adding proper support for functions, like lambdas, can be done quite metacircularly; and thus in a very short code.
If that still takes to many lines for his challenge, leave out linked lists or arithmetic. Lambdas are more important in Lisp, and you can re-create both of them as a library in the language, if you have lambdas.
It was an example designed under pretty specific constraints that preclude the suggestions he was making.