I considered it too, but hadn't heard of ord(); but I stumbled across it while looking for possible solutions.

Something I've started to realize as someone learning Python who is going through katas is that there are a surprising number of functions that can do the heavy lifting of the problem for you.

In case anyone reading this is new to Python: Google is your friend, and should be consulted often. Nobody is going to spend their career in a bubble with only their personal language knowledge to rely upon. There's no shame in it, and you'll likely learn some handy tricks in the process.