[This question](http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1862725/working-with-lagrange-multipliers-reducing-gradients-is-okay-right) on Lagrange multipliers was closed for being "unclear."

The actual question seems clear to me: When solving the system of equations for $\lambda$ in the typical Lagrange multiplier calculation, is it OK to reduce the equations to make solving easier? I admit it would be nice if the OP would say something about why they would think that might not be OK, but I still don't really see what's unclear.

There are currently 3 votes to reopen (one of them mine), and it seems to have [gone through](http://math.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/657841) the review queue fully.

My apologies if I misunderstand "the natural course" of reopening, but I assume that's more or less done, having completed the review queue, albeit somewhat recently.