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Syllable Question

I had never written any poetry before I came to fanstory last month. Because many of the contests are for very short forms, I thought, maybe I could give this a try. And I have been having fun playing around with it!

Many of these contests require counting syllables, and I am confused as to how to do that with certain words.

These are examples from what I saw today, so some of you might recognize them from your own poems. I am not being critical of it, I am just trying to understand it.

Words I saw that I am assuming are being counted as one syllable based on the total count:
Fire and Rhythm
The dictionary shows the pronunciations as: fahyuhr and rith-uhm. Both are definitely spoken with two syllables.

And then the opposite. A word counted with three syllables (based on total syllable count) but only two are spoken:
Entwined

Since poetry often seems dependent on cadence, I would think the spoken syllable count is important.
Please educate me. :-)