Adult Puzzle Books

Cookies: we love them. Girl Scouts: they are sweet. Girl Scout Cookies: they’re sweet, but maybe we shouldn’t love them. This investigator’s recent investigations into Girl Scout Cookies have shed some light on the highly questionable production practices of the famous American treat.

It all started when I heard the doorbell go “ding.”

“Dong,” I said, because I’m that fast, and because my doorbell is broken.

I opened the door and saw a group of suspiciously happy-looking girls standing at my door with a clipboard.

“Would you like to buy some cookies, Mister?” they asked, cutely.

“I would!”

“Yay!” they said in unison, again making me suspicious. Who had put them up to this?

“Once I get a tour of your production centers and make sure that I’m consuming ethically produced confectionary goods, that is.”

The girls looked stunned. “Mama Scout won’t like that,” one girl whimpered.

“I don’t give a damn about Mama Scout, whoever she is. I’ll buy the goods if you can get me into the factory.”

The girls looked uneasy, and I had a hunch that it wasn’t because a stranger had screamed in their faces in the middle of the day. Something deeper and far more sinister was going on.

They whispered to each other, and I overheard one say, “If we don’t make our cookie goal, they’ll make us go back!”

It seemed like my stone-turning was bearing some fruit. And I was about to find out how rotten the fruit had gotten under that stone.

We came to an agreement. I’d pre-order twenty boxes, and, in return, they’d take me to see the factory where the cookies were produced—a location they referred to ominously as “Mama’s place.”

* * *

The girls led me up a path lined with cookie crumbs that crumbled under my feet, and I wondered how the hell I was going to explain all this to my cobbler. I’d figure that out later, though. A large door opened at the top of the path, and the Scouts who had led me scattered like the pieces of a dropped cookie, similar to the cookie pieces I had been walking on. One girl stayed with me. “You won’t make it out without a Tagalong,” she said.

I half expected her to give me a cookie, but it turned out that she was making a pun, and that she was going to tag along with me to show me through the Girl Scout Cookie factory.

I walked in slowly, not sure what to expect, apart from a cookie factory, unless those other Girl Scouts had completely screwed me over.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I began to make out small figures weaving between enormous pieces of machinery. The air, slightly cold but deeply sweet, carried cries and sobs to my ears.

Tagalong led me to one set of machines, which was being operated by an emaciated young girl, who looked sickly green.

“Thin Mint?” I ventured.

“No, she’s just very ill, and has been on a fourteen-hour shift with one fifteen-minute break. She’s making Samoas. I bet you love Samoas, right? Maybe now you won’t eat them with such gusto.”

Apparently puns were no longer O.K.

I took a hurried photo of the Samoa maker. I needed to shut this place down, and put an end to this suffering. For that, I would need photographic evidence.

Tagalong led me farther, past a group of girls carrying large buckets of coconuts, presumably to the Samoa maker.

“You won’t see many Savannah Smiles here,” Tagalong said.

“We’re back to cookie puns?” I asked.

“No, it’s just that the Savannah Smiles aren’t that popular as a cookie. Also, no one is smiling here.” It was technically a pun, but, considering the situation, I gave her a pass.

We moved down a rusting metal staircase, and I was suddenly enveloped in a cloud of thick, nutty dust that was blowing from a large exhaust chute. I began coughing, and my eyes started to burn.

“That’s the Peanut Butter Patty machine,” Tagalong explained. “If you work here too long, you’ll end up with Peanut Lung.”

I fought my way through the cloud, dragging Tagalong by the hand until we had escaped the sweet and noxious fumes.

“I promise you, Tagalong—when I get out of here, the whole world will know about the evils of the Girl Scout Cookie. No girl who is looking for a fun and social learning experience that also helps raise money for the Girl Scout cause will ever have to suffer through this again.”

I looked at her, expecting to see her eyes filled with gratitude at my courage and optimism, but instead saw a look of terror. She was looking at something, or someone, behind me.

“Mama Scout,” I whispered under my breath, coughing up the last remnants of the Peanut Butter Patty dust, and then slyly eating them because I couldn’t resist.

I pivoted, hoping to catch Mama off guard, but she was too fast, even for me. When I turned to face her, she was holding an enormous badge with a sharp, gleaming pin, pointed right at my chest.

“We give this badge to meddlers who try to Trefoil my plans,” she cackled.

This pun was unforgivable, as was the child-labor factory thing I had just seen. I couldn’t let her get away with either of them.

“Behind you!” I yelled. “Some of the girls are stealing the Do-si-dos!”

She looked, for just long enough to give me the upper hand. I grabbed the badge, and turned its vicious pin back on her. I had won.

Tagalong helped to round up all of the girls as I guarded Mama Scout, and we led the girls out to freedom. When the police arrived, I gave my statement, showed my photographs, and watched them escort Mama out in handcuffs.

I started to walk back home, a good day’s work and a recently closed cookie factory behind me, when I felt a small hand tug on my jacket. It was Tagalong.

“Hey, Mister,” she said. “Do you still want your cookies?”

“Of course,” I replied. “They’re really good.”

“Thanks-a-Lot,” said Tagalong, as she marked the order on her clipboard.

I’d let her have that one. The pun, I mean. Not the cookie.

Photograph by MarkCoffeyPhoto/Getty.