diff --git a/font/sfnt/cmap.go b/font/sfnt/cmap.go
index 3adda03..9db98a8 100644
--- a/font/sfnt/cmap.go
+++ b/font/sfnt/cmap.go
@@ -206,13 +206,13 @@
 	if err != nil {
 		return nil, err
 	}
-	offset += headerSize
-
 	length := u32(buf[4:])
-	numGroups := u32(buf[12:])
 	if f.cmap.length < offset || length > f.cmap.length-offset {
 		return nil, errInvalidCmapTable
 	}
+	offset += headerSize
+
+	numGroups := u32(buf[12:])
 	if numGroups > maxCmapSegments {
 		return nil, errUnsupportedNumberOfCmapSegments
 	}
diff --git a/font/sfnt/sfnt.go b/font/sfnt/sfnt.go
index 8757d7a..61281e7 100644
--- a/font/sfnt/sfnt.go
+++ b/font/sfnt/sfnt.go
@@ -30,8 +30,17 @@
 const (
 	// This value is arbitrary, but defends against parsing malicious font
 	// files causing excessive memory allocations. For reference, Adobe's
-	// SourceHanSansSC-Regular.otf has 65535 glyphs and 1581 cmap segments.
-	maxCmapSegments = 4096
+	// SourceHanSansSC-Regular.otf has 65535 glyphs and:
+	//	- its format-4  cmap table has  1581 segments.
+	//	- its format-12 cmap table has 16498 segments.
+	//
+	// TODO: eliminate this constraint? If the cmap table is very large, load
+	// some or all of it lazily (at the time Font.GlyphIndex is called) instead
+	// of all of it eagerly (at the time Font.initialize is called), while
+	// keeping an upper bound on the memory used? This will make the code in
+	// cmap.go more complicated, considering that all of the Font methods are
+	// safe to call concurrently, as long as each call has a different *Buffer.
+	maxCmapSegments = 20000
 
 	maxGlyphDataLength  = 64 * 1024
 	maxHintBits         = 256