I think you misunderstood the question, probably due my poor explanation. You have to look both sides at the same time in a single range. You can't pick one range that has a far right side and another that has a far left side. In other words: for each position i we are looking for the (half) size of the minimal (odd-sized) window which is centered around i, and is not contained by any (single) range. You can't 'split' the containment between two ranges.

Going back to the example of position 1:

half size 0: there exists a range that covers 1,1
half size 1: there exists a range that covers 35,2
half size 2: there exists a range that covers 34,3
...
half size 8: there exists a range that covers 28,9 (e.g. 28,10)
half size 9: there is NO range that covers 27,10. DONE!

I hope it's more clear now.

(p.s. in your ASCII art it seems as if MAX=36, not 35, doesn't it?)