Number of rounds in swiss?

Is it possible to run a seven-round Swiss with 16-25 players? Say, a club championship in which one wants to have not only a single clear winner but one who doesn't win just because of a fluke of the Swiss system? (We currently use a round robin on eight players, but we have too many good players now--we have to exclude some from the tournament. I want a clear and deserving winner without excluding good players from the tournament.)

That small a group should probably be split into 2 round robins and then a playoff after that to determine the all time champ

I've moved and updated my round robin page from ten years ago: rrpair.php

#42
"Is it possible to run a seven-round Swiss with 16-25 players?"
++ No, the pairings are sure to go wrong. Use 5 rounds.
Otherwise make it 2 or 3 round robin tournaments.

The US Chess Federation Tournament Director test always has a small Swiss 4th round pairing that ends up making you pair the guy with 3 points against someone with a half point, because anyone else leaves you with all the others having played each other before. And if you're a club director, you'll come across one of these fairly quickly.

I don't use software. People say I should, but I lug enough equipment to the club and then I'd need a power source near the table (in a bar) where I do my pairings. Too much bother. I have the rule book and some scrap paper to improvise a crosstable.

There are currently 12 different tests (3 club/local - multiple choice, 3 senior - multiple choice plus one pairing question, 3 associate national - essay and 3 national - essay).  I doubt if any of them had a perfect score playing a bottom tier player (at least, not as the correct answer).  There have, however, been multiple threads on the US Chess forums with examples of such pairings being quite legitimate.

A round robin would require 9 rounds for 9 players (each round one player gets a bye).

I've seen many tournaments with one perfect score going into the final round and then a multi-player tie for first after the final round (and sometimes the incoming perfect score lost and was not one of the players tying for first).

With young kids or inexperienced players you can figure mostly decisive games and a Swiss of five rounds would allow up to 32 players to have at most one perfect score.  With more experienced players you will see a number of draws and generally five rounds would easily be enough to make sure there is no more than one perfect score for 48 players and maybe as high as 80 players (or even 96).

Doubt it all you want, I took the test and stand by my assertion.

Out of curiosity, which of the twelve tests are you referring to as "the" test?

I just double-checked and none of the final pairing questions on the three Senior TD tests have that type of question.

Was it an earlier multiple choice question with a VERY small number of players left?

EDIT: none of the 12 tests have that type of question.

Just how long ago was that test taken?

Just how long ago was that test taken?

About 1980.

If you change "The US Chess Federation Tournament Director test always has a small Swiss 4th round pairing" to "The US Chess Federation Tournament Director test used to have a small Swiss 4th round pairing" then that might be accurate (I didn't start working with all the tests until this century) and the tests I took last century did not have such a question.

Same here. I took the local TD test circa 1985 and did not see such a question. I thought the way the tests worked back then was a selection of questions from a large pool of all questions. (In practice it was more likely just a bunch of pre-selected and pre-printed questions, and they sent one of those sets.) That way not everybody saw the same questions.