Google Chrome doesn't use proper font in PDF
Turns out Windows does not show you all fonts installed in explorer, even if you explicitly ask it to. And the registry is also not a single source of truth. I had missed the importance of not relying on explorer in the replies given in the other discussion.
To see this, open Powershell and ls C:\Windows\Fonts
. Suddenly there were dozens of fonts listed in front of Arial - including ALIEN5.ttf.
The solution was then simply cp C:\Windows\Fonts\arial.ttf C:\Windows\Fonts\001-arial.ttf
(this requires administrator rights - in the start menu, right click powershell and "Run as administrator") following a reboot.