  Suppose that G is a nontrivial torsion-free group and w is a word in the
alphabet G\cup\{x_1^{\pm1},...,x_n^{\pm1}\} such that the word w' obtained from
w by erasing all letters belonging to G is not a proper power in the free group
F(x_1,...,x_n). We show how to reduce the study of the relative presentation
\^G=<G,x_1,x_2,...,x_n | w=1> to the case n=1. It turns out that an
"n-variable" group \^G can be constructed from similar "one-variable" groups
using an explicit construction similar to wreath product. As an illustration,
we prove that, for n>1, the centre of \^G is always trivial. For n=1, the
centre of \^G is also almost always trivial; there are several exceptions, and
all of them are known.
