Changing the coefficients doesn't change the task in any way.

That's incorrect, it would invalidate one of the top-rated solutions which relies on the mirror relationship to calculate effectiveness.

But I agree that it wouldn't add much to have another slightly different kata.

Thanks, fixed

One of the simple test cases in Python has a typo in the input in the word "Python".

You'll have to insert something into your code to see the parameters they're using for testing. Maybe print the inputs?
Regarding this test, if 13 is a possible total given the cards available, then you should return 13 and not 23, because the instrauctions say: "Return the highest score of the cards that is less than or equal to 21."

Are you generating all possible numbers and then checking each one to see if the digits are increasing or not?
I did that first, and it works for a low number of digits, but takes expoentially longer with larger numbers of digits.
There's a better way of approaching the problem.

As a beginner, it's more readable than solutions using ord().