Thanks for those responses.
I tried the suggestions posted by Dion, unfortunately they did not let me get past WP's configuration page (http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/setup-config.php).
Then I went back to the phpMyAdmin page, removed the DB and User created for WP and began trying different permentations of creating the user/db that would allow me to proceed past the .../setup-config.php page.
In the spirit of adding what I learned and that worked, I'll post it here.
When creating a new user/db combination on the create new user page in phpMyAdmin the default Host value type is Any Host which was left unchanged in previous unsuccessful attempts. In a recent attempt, the Host type was changed to Local and the following field was changed to Localhost. (The properly filled out phpMyAdmin/users page is displayed here )
This new variant allowed me to successfully complete the .../setup-config.php page (configuring WP and creating a wp-config.php file) and move to creating my first WP project. No doubt that approach would have seemed obvious to a seasoned WAMP/AMP server guru but for this newbie, it was a learning experience that will be shared for other newbs.
Cheers.