Wrap text around letters in a text box?

I've seen this done in magazine layouts and such: a word or phrase in big lowercase letters in the middle of a page, with article text wrapped tightly around the letters of the big word or phrase; not merely wrapped around the text box. It only matters if the word/phrase is lowercase and has tall letters in the middle but not start or end and/or the first and last letters aren't vertical on their outside edges. Is there a way to do that in Pages (yet)?

What I've tried:

1. Textbox object floating, text wrap enabled set to surround the object, text fit set to follow the object boundary with no extra space. Since a textbox is a box, the boundary is the box; not the letters of the text inside.

2. Textbox set to background, inline, floating, locked, unlocked AND a custom drawn shape around the letters of the word/phrase, kept forward of the textbox object, with text wrap enabled and set as in item 1 above. Wrap settings recognize that there's text inside the textbox and attempt to wrap the word/phrase around the bounding shape object, resulting in the word/phrase vanishing.

It's not common enough to want this as I actually expect Pages to have the ability, but _if anyone has done it_ please respond. Meantime, I'll try a less appealing effect using transparency or all caps...