Exactly, Twisty! And that is why I wrote this small hack as posted above - because it really does return the search back to the KISS principle.
Many of my members are not programmers and really don't care to be. The use of " + " and " - " in their search arguments is just not going to happen.
So i whipped up the above bit of code so search would work the same functionality as in 6.3x and prior - along with the same ability to select ("hand pick") different forums or cats as you want.