I certainly don't want to set scope of the buttons to public, but I'm afraid I don't understand the alternative which you expressed. Do you think you could be more specific? I don't know what method you would use on a JPanel to provide access to the buttons (especially because the number of buttons on the panel is dynamic).

After some more research, I found

e.getSource()

Is this an advisable solution, or can you think of an easier/better/simpler way that I should be testing the buttons?

I can understand the elseif and the array of buttons, however I'm still not quite sure exactly what method I would use to find out which button was pressed. Is the a certain .method() that I can use to test if a button is pressed?

Try adding, after setting your color... I don't know why your grid is unclickable, but this should at least solve your other errors:

world.add(new Location(2, 2), mom);

I used a different maze. I ran it again with the other maze and got 84.