I have no idea what "physical" intuition is, but intuition is very powerful in the hands of experts. For instance: Kekule's discovery of benzene structure during a dream: it would not be possible without out his profound understanding of the chemistry.
Woit seems to have the math person's idea of what physical intuition is, though. What I mean is, even though the basic ingredient of intuition for everyone is experience, because math is so fragmented most mathematicians have different intuition from other mathematicians (depending on the specific set of problems or examples they have personally encountered). Whereas..[the human concept called] physics can be travelled end-to-end in a couple of weeks (says Lenny Susskind)
The guy you're replying to is probably thinking about something more along the lines of the math guys' intuition, because in those days, how many chemists have even thought deeply about benzene..
Physicists are the weird ones here!
the busticket theory of genius tells us however that there won't be any purely theoretical physics geniuses any time soon (i.e. that weeks-wide room has been combed for curiosities already bro)
That said, I hope Lenny Susskind is wrong, e.g. there were commenters on that post that mentioned (in-passing, sadly) several mathematical curiosities that are considered uninteresting to a vast majority of physicists
