Why does the 64bit Linux Mint Live run on my 32bit machine?

Just made my Live-USB from 64bit Mint 21.3 (https://www.linuxmint.com/torrents/linuxmint-21.3-xfce-64bit.iso.torrent) and plugged into my old 32bit laptop, forgetting it still is such old. (Probably it’s not relevant, but in any case: I created the USB stick basically following the answer at https://askubuntu.com/a/1227225/602021)

Everything boots and runs fine, new software comes from amd64 repository, is installable and runs also.

How can that be, given that it is software for another architecture?

EDIT:

Laptop chipset & model:

$ lscpu 
Architecture:           i686
  CPU op-mode(s):       32-bit, 64-bit
  Address sizes:        36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
  Byte Order:           Little Endian
CPU(s):                 2
  On-line CPU(s) list:  0,1
Vendor ID:              GenuineIntel
  Model name:           Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU         T6600  @ 2.20GHz
    CPU family:         6
    Model:              23
    Thread(s) per core: 1
    Core(s) per socket: 2
    Socket(s):          1
    Stepping:           10
    CPU(s) scaling MHz: 66%
    CPU max MHz:        2200,0000
    CPU min MHz:        1200,0000
    BogoMIPS:           4388,93
    Flags:              fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse 
                        sse2 ht tm pbe nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts cpuid aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl est
 
$ sudo dmidecode | grep -A3 '^System Information' 
System Information
    Manufacturer: Acer           
    Product Name: Extensa 5220                   
    Version: 0100