Hello Paul,

The easiest and most logical approach is to use a DropDownList. Users will not be able to type, but once the dropdown is open and a key is pressed, the first item starting with the pressed key will be focused for faster access.

Clearing a typed value, forcing a focused state or similar practices are not considered user-friendly.

All the best,
Dimo
the Telerik team

 Unfortunately the dropdownlist isn't really workable. In this case the user is selecting from what could be thousands of items and it needs to have the ability to search across a few fields in a table. 

I noticed that the select event fires when the user selects a valid entry. Is there any other event available when they clear the entry, or when they have entered something that isn't valid (basically any event that would fire whenever the select doesn't, but something has changed)? I guess worse case I could hook into the onfocus/onblur of the underlying textbox and try to track this myself.

Hello Paul,

You must have noticed that there is also a change event. In my opinion, it is more convenient than select.

Regards,
Dimo
the Telerik team