Wifi waiting for authorization

[Phil]

Thank you for reading this.

All of a sudden I'm no longer able to connect to my mobile phone via a 
wireless connection; I get the "waiting for authorization" message 
instead. Connecting wirelessly is necessary so that I can SSH into my 
Raspberry pi which still happily connects wirelessly as it always has.

An Internet search shows that this is a common question and a common 
answer is to delete the wifi entry and then let the system rediscover 
the phone. I tried this but without any success; I still have the 
"waiting for authorization" message.

I also tried sudo nmcli dev wifi connect my_device password my_password 
and received:
Error: No network with SSID 'my_device' found.

A tethered USB connection via the phone still works.

Any ideas? In the meantime I'm going to try a wireless connection with 
Windows on this dual boot Thinkpad laptop.

-- 
Regards,
Phil