Conclusion:
Either I'm not good enough at python, python is the wrong tool, or the cut and paste was too big to brute force.
This may sound obvious but have you tried to actually test the code you wrote with an example? The problem may be in your code.
Choose some of the variations (with 1, 2, 3, ... transposition) at random and generate their addresses then enter that address in your code and start the search to see if it can find the correct answer. This way you can be sure that your code is fine.