Financial Times 13,894 / Redshank

The last time I blogged a Redshank crossword, its theme took me a long time to decipher. This was easy enough to work out with 5a being one of the first answers in. This puzzle had one of those themes in which, once you know the trick, you get all the answers from the definition alone without having to unravel the wordplay. That letdown apart, I found this a pleasant puzzle with some cheeky/amusing techniques (e.g. 19a, 27a).

Themed answers are prefixed with * and in green.

Across

1 ENSHRINE (RHINESTONE – TO)*
5 *DIRHAM (MAHDI)* around R[ebel]. A unit of currency in Libya, sub-unit of the dinar.
9 CHEAPEST C’EST (“it’s” in French) around HEAP (pile)
10 *KRONER K (king), ONE (single) in RR (posh car). The Danish currency is ‘krone’ and ‘kroner’ is its plural, as far as I know. This feels like a slight inconsistency with the other themed words that are in the singular.
12 DIESEL OIL DIESE (‘these’ in German), LOL (acronym for ‘laugh out loud’) around I (Italian)
13 *POUND POD (school) around UN (one). The British currency.
14 UFOS FO (Flying Officer) in US (the pond?) &lit. The wordplay isn’t perfectly clear to me. Is ‘the pond’ slang for US? A web search tell me that The Pond was a secret US government organization between 1942 and 1955. // Update: The pond means the Atlantic, so ‘over the pond’ = ‘in the US’. Thanks to Gaufrid @ comment#1.
16 WHIPSAW WARSAW (Polish capital) – A R (radical) + HIP (cool). Cool wordplay.
19 *RINGGIT RING (band) IT, parted with G (grand). The currency of Malaysia. We need to read ‘bandit’ as ‘band it’. I think this clue needs a question mark or some such signal for the elision.
21 *RAND RAN (smuggled) D (diamonds)
24 *DINAR DINAR RAND (from 21a) reversed, around I[nvasion]
25 TELEPHOTO (TO THE POLE)*
27 *FORINT OR (soldiers – Other Ranks) IN (popular), in FT (us, the paper), with false capitalisation to make ‘us’ look like the country. Forint is the Hungarian currency.
28 CANNIBAL H (hot) in place of C (cold) would give Hannibal of The Silence of the Lambs fame.
29 LYRIST LYRICIST (songwriter) – IC (in charge)
30 INNER EAR INN (hotel) [th]E REAR (back)

Down

1 *ESCUDO CU (copper) in (DOES)*. The currency of Portugal before the introduction of the Euro.
2 *SHEKEL (LEEKS)* around H[aifa]. An Israeli coin.
3 *RUPEE UP (finished) in REE[d] (short grass). The Indian currency.
4 NO-SHOWS NOSH (eat) O[r]W[a]S[h]
6 IRRUPTION IR (Irish) RU (rugby) (IN TOP)*
7 HINDUISM (HIS N IS MUD)* – but this has an extra ‘S’. An error? (HI[s] N IS MUD)*. Thanks to Wanderer @ comment#2.
8 MARK DOWN (WORKMAN)* around D (from 23d: short for ‘dollar’). Good one.
11 BLEW sounds like ‘blue’ (the color – navy blue)
15 FIGURINES dd
17 PRIDEFUL P (from 26d: short for ‘pence’) RIDE (successfully endure) (FLU)*
18 ENSNARER S N (poles) in (NEARER)*
20 TATE first letters of ‘The Apprentice Tom Enraged’. I knew of the art gallery but not the sugar business. More on Henry Tate here.
21 RELEARN RELEN[t] (almost slacken) around AR (Arabic)
22 *ROUBLE [t]ROUBLE (unrest). The Russian currency.
23 *DOLLAR DO (party), RALL (slowing) reversed. In music, ‘rall’ is the gradual slowing of tempo.
26 *PENCE PEN (write) CE (Common Era i.e. these days). This one has a complete definition – “little money”, unlike the other themed clues with a partial definition.

That makes it 12 themed answers, not 13. What am I missing? // Update: I had missed 24a in the original blog. Added now.