For example, if the user had sin(x)+1=2 and x^2=4 (or, sin(x)+1=x^2-4 equivalently) then the lines would be set up as
sin(3)+1 = eval
3^2 = eval
and then the user would link the two 3s and proceed to "scrub" until a common answer for x was found. While this problem is unsolvable for x, each expression is valid and able to be evaluated.
As somebody said below, this scrubbing amounts to nothing more than brute force guess and check of equations. No additional knowledge is gained through this type of approach and I would never recommend this for anything but the most trivial of problems and even then a standard approach would probably be faster.
EDIT: Looking at the more advanced "locking" functionality, I think you are probably correct in that this functionality may be constrained to monotonic functions only.
The specifics don't matter, the bottom line is, anything that Mathematica can solve, this can be useful for, simply by solving the equation for the chosen dependent variable (the red number) every time you adjust the value of an independent variable (any of the black numbers).