This puzzle was rather empty of direction, giving a short set of clues each with a tuple of numbers. The title of the puzzle hinted at pairs, it turned out all the clues had answers consisting of a set of letters appearing exactly twice. Further, the tuples of numbers referred to the distances between the like pairs, in the order of the leftmost pair member. The answers (clued alphabetically to help with confirmation) were:

disgust (3,1,1) - APPALL

mollifies (4,1,3,2) - APPEASES

calling in (3,1,3,4,2) - ARRAIGNING

it’s pickled (4,4,4,4) - CHOWCHOW

staple that’s approx 1 to 2 mm (4,4,4,4) - COUSCOUS

one who will take a leaner, maybe (6,6,7,2,4) - HORSESHOER

a 90’s spoof (if you insert a space) (4,4,4,4) - HOTSHOTS

guts (6,6,3,5,5) - INTESTINES

like most sets (2,2,3,4,2) - NONORDERED

swinging makes one less impressive (5,3,1) - PULLUP

show up again (7,4,4,1) - REAPPEAR

the player at bat after you, say (6,6,3,1) - TEAMMATE

The bold and italic numbers corresponded to the letters PANCCHHENPEA. While each letter here appears exactly twice, the alphabetical nature of the answers hinted that we might need to find a new ordering of these letters… in fact they can be anagrammed to the word HAPPENCHANCE, whose letters are arranged according to the tuple (7,7,1,7,4,4), the answer requested by the cheeky final hint at the bottom of the puzzle.

Congrats to this month’s solvers!