MySQL Workbench Administrator - GUI "Access denied for user root " gotcha
Long story short - the previous night I ran the Java tutorial's SQL script to set the root password. It succeeded. However the GUI was not aware of this new password value, but still it was aware that there was a password, so I got the odd message. 

If you see this message in a similar case, just quit the workbench and restart, enter the changed password and all is fine.